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Newbie / Newb question about mutation
« on: January 19, 2008, 12:23:38 AM »
Hello,
I've just started with DB and I'm really intrigued by it. But I'm confused by the concept behind these mutations. I'm a biochemist with a specialization in bioinformatics so I understand the concept of mutation and evolutionary modeling, but I'm interested in exactly what is taking place. When I see a point mutation is that referring to the change of one character in the code that defines the organism's DNA? If so, how does this avoid making the code invalid? I guess the simplest way to ask my question is this:
If I allow an organism to continue for a period of time and it mutates and I save its DNA code and open it in a text editor next to the original non-mutated DNA code, what difference would I see? Would single integers be changed? Or would entire genes be rearranged?
I've just started with DB and I'm really intrigued by it. But I'm confused by the concept behind these mutations. I'm a biochemist with a specialization in bioinformatics so I understand the concept of mutation and evolutionary modeling, but I'm interested in exactly what is taking place. When I see a point mutation is that referring to the change of one character in the code that defines the organism's DNA? If so, how does this avoid making the code invalid? I guess the simplest way to ask my question is this:
If I allow an organism to continue for a period of time and it mutates and I save its DNA code and open it in a text editor next to the original non-mutated DNA code, what difference would I see? Would single integers be changed? Or would entire genes be rearranged?