In: Biology
How does a point mutation in the DNA have the possibility of resulting in no phenotypic change in an organism. Explain.
Point mutation is single base pairs change in the sequence of DNA of a cell. It is of three types, silent mutation, missense mutation and nonsense mutation.
Both nonsense mutation and missense mutation result in a change in the phenotype of the cell because they alter the protein structure. But silent mutation do not alter the phenotype because they do not affect the structure of protein.
Silent mutation change the sequence of nucleotides on DNA but do not change the sequence of amino acids. This is because of the degeneracy of genetic code where one amino acid can be encoded by more than one codons.
For example, if a DNA is having GTT, than on mRNA it will be GUU, and this will encode for valine.
If GTT is mutated to GTA, than mRNA will have GUA, and this will also encode for valine.
In this case, the sequence of nucleotides on DNA has changed but there is no effect on the type of amino acid being encoded.
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