Mutation is Part of Our Lives as Biological Organisms

3 months ago

As a child, I watched a lot of Animations or Cartoons as you would refer to them and one of the things that always caught my attention were superhero movies. There was something similar about the superheroes in those movies aside taking down the bad guys, and that was mutation. They never explained to us in full what cells were mutated when the spider bit Peter Parker to make him Spiderman, but we knew mutation occurred and he became a super hero.

As a child, I would put spiders on my hand so they would bite me and i would change to spider man but they always ran off to safety and I wouldn't try that again but then, why we have not been able to become superheroes that can fly and save a lot of things, we have undergone a lot of mutation. In fact, on a regular, we experience mutation and these mutations or genetic change as we can regard to it can either be helpful, harmful, or not have any effect.

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While mutations has not been able to make superheroes, it has given some people the ability to do things that others can't do like take coffee and be able to metabolize caffeine efficiently unlike other people, some people also as a result of mutation, can sleep for a little amount of time and feel rested than people who slept for a very long time, but remember I mentioned that mutation can also be bad, and an example of such is mutation sending people to their early graves.

In pop culture, mutation can be a very big deal but this isn't what its means in our world as mutation is a change in an organism genetic code which are found in our DNA. Our DNA contains sequences of nucleotide with its base being represented as A,T,G, and C and a mutation occurs when a nucleotide base is replaced with another thereby creating a new DNA sequence just similarly to how an ingredient can change the taste of a food.

Mutations just as it can happen in DNAs that code for protein, they can also happen in DNA that do not code for protein but these usually do not have visible effect. Also, there are also mutations that can be inherited from parent to offspring such as hemophilia where blood find it difficult to clot.

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Mutation would occur as a result of two things with the first being location. If the entire cells in your body undergo mutation, their effects would differ in the cells depending on their location in the body and this is because the cells in the brain code differently from cells in your heart muscles or tissue muscles. When mutation occur during conception, it is regarded as somatic mutation and this mutation can occur anywhere in the body but not the egg or sperm cells. Talking about sperm or egg cells, if there is a mutation in one egg or sperm cell, it is referred to as De Novo mutation. Just like I said, all these are based on the location of the mutation, so let me discuss another factor that affect how a mutation occur and that is "How the mutation altered the DNA".

In your DNA, when one nucleotide is substituted for a different one is known as substitution and depending on which of the nucleotide is substituted, it can either mean nothing or a whole lot of thing. While it might look like it is not a big deal, this kind of mutation can lead to a whole lot of problem just like me wanting to tell someone that they glow, only for me to substitute to "g" for "b", it wouldn't pass the message I wanted to pass across to the person successfully and would mean something different. This is just how substitution works on nucleotide for instance a substitution of the base G with U in the combination GAA would mean a stop codon which would mean that whatever protein is being produced should be stopped instead of GAA which would mean addition of Glutamic Acid to cell.

While we haven't been able to create superheroes, our genes mutate almost every time and while some might be recessive, some can be dominant. They can affect us both as neonates and as whole beings. Never make the mistake of thinking that mutation doesn't occur in your body because it always happen in your body either you are aware of it or not.