What a Difference a Mutation Makes
Chapter 8: Protein Synthesis

A change that occurs in only one nucleotide can change a codon in mRNA and allow a different amino acid to be inserted in a polypeptide chain. For example, look at the following sequence of words:

four

foul

fool

food

mood

Note that each word differs from the previous word by only one letter. Consider these changes as "point mutations" affecting word meaning.

Try This

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1. Think of a word. Change one letter in this word and create another word. Continue to change each resulting word as modeled above.



2. Use the following sentence to model a frameshift mutation in which a deletion of one letter has occurred:
   The fat cat ate the rat.
   Note what would happen to the sense of the sentence if you deleted only one letter in one word and then grouped the resulting letters in triplets.



3. Model a frameshift mutation by inserting a letter in your sentence. What does this do to your sentence?

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