how do mutations work? i guess all through out college no professor has bee able to explain it simple?

Question

please help !!

Answer 1

Either chemicals or radiation can cause a mutation, and they physically interact with the DNA.

Mutation actually causes the base or bases of DNA to change. The DNA often codes a gene and so that code changes, changing the resulting protein. Sometimes the change is noticeable and sometimes it is not.

That's my simple explanation of how mutation works.

Answer 2

It's kind of like a computer program. A computer program has files with information and it can get corrupted, right? If you look at a program file using a word processor you see a bunch of letters, numbers and symbols. If you change or delete some of these letters, numbers or symbols the file and program might not work properly.

All living things have DNA. The DNA is like a file or program with information in it. If it gets messed up, it wont work properly and depending on what gets messed up it could mean your left arm is twice the size of your right arm, or your hair and skin might be as white as snow or you have one green eye and one blue.

In the past few years scientists have been playing with DNA. They have cloned sheep using the DNA of another sheep, they copied it kind of the same way you would copy a MP3 or other computer file. And they have been researching DNA with "stem cell research" trying to find out what part of the DNA does what function, so they can grow a new heart, lung or kidney for somebody.

It's kind of like selective mutation, and they only grow what they want from the DNA.

Hopefully I explained it good enough for you, I don't know how to explain it any simpler. I'm just a truck driver, and if your professors haven't been able to explain it, shame on them.

Answer 3

Cells reproduce themselves all the time. In fact, it's estimated that every living cell in your whole body is replaced every seven years. Sometimes, the copy is just a little off, and that's a mutation. If the slightly different cell survives, then it's considered a mutation and everytime it reproduces that change will also be passed to any new cells it makes. In multicellular creatures, this change in the genetic code has to happen in the reproductive cells (egg and sperm cells) to be passed to any offspring. Most of the time these slight changes make cells that are dangerous to the organism (like cancers), or simply die off on their own, but scientists think sometimes they do good things too...

Answer 4

--If you are talking about mutations in evolution--They do not work for any good!

PLEASE NOTE THE SUPPOSITION:

*** ce chap. 8 pp. 99-100 pars. 2-5 Mutations—A Basis for Evolution? ***

2 “Mutations . . . are the basis of evolution,” states The World Book Encyclopedia.1 Similarly, paleontologist Steven Stanley called mutations “the raw materials” for evolution.2 And geneticist Peo Koller declared that mutations “are necessary for evolutionary progress.”3.....

-----Are They Helpful or Harmful?
6 If beneficial mutations are a basis of evolution, what proportion of them are beneficial? There is overwhelming agreement on this point among evolutionists. For example, Carl Sagan declares: “Most of them are harmful or lethal.”8 Peo Koller states: “The greatest proportion of mutations are deleterious to the individual who carries the mutated gene. It was found in experiments that, for every successful or useful mutation, there are many thousands which are harmful.”9

7 Excluding any “neutral” mutations, then, harmful ones outnumber those that are supposedly beneficial by thousands to one. “Such results are to be expected of accidental changes occurring in any complicated organization,” states the Encyclopædia Britannica.10 That is why mutations are said to be responsible for hundreds of diseases that are genetically determined.11

8 Because of the harmful nature of mutations, the Encyclopedia Americana acknowledged: “The fact that most mutations are damaging to the organism seems hard to reconcile with the view that mutation is the source of raw materials for evolution. Indeed, mutants illustrated in biology textbooks are a collection of freaks and monstrosities and mutation seems to be a destructive rather than a constructive process.”12 When mutated insects were placed in competition with normal ones, the result was always the same. As G. Ledyard Stebbins observed: “After a greater or lesser number of generations the mutants are eliminated.”13 They could not compete because they were not improved but were degenerate and at a disadvantage........

.....Do Mutations Produce Anything New?
11 Even if all mutations were beneficial, could they produce anything new? No, they could not. A mutation could only result in a variation of a trait that is already there. It provides variety, but never anything new.

12 The World Book Encyclopedia gives an example of what might happen with a beneficial mutation: “A plant in a dry area might have a mutant gene that causes it to grow larger and stronger roots. The plant would have a better chance of survival than others of its species because its roots could absorb more water.”16 But has anything new appeared? No, it is still the same plant. It is not evolving into something else.

13 Mutations may change the color or texture of a person’s hair. But the hair will always be hair. It will never turn into feathers. A person’s hand may be changed by mutations. It may have fingers that are abnormal. At times there may even be a hand with six fingers or with some other malformation. But it is always a hand. It never changes into something else. Nothing new is coming into existence, nor can it ever."........

.......Not a Basis for Evolution
29 The conclusion is clear. No amount of accidental genetic change can cause one kind of life to turn into another kind. As French biologist Jean Rostand once said: “No, decidedly, I cannot make myself think that these ‘slips’ of heredity have been able, even with the cooperation of natural selection, even with the advantage of the immense periods of time in which evolution works on life, to build the entire world, with its structural prodigality and refinements, its astounding ‘adaptations.’”30

30 Similarly, geneticist C. H. Waddington stated regarding the belief in mutations: “This is really the theory that if you start with any fourteen lines of coherent English and change it one letter at a time, keeping only those things that still make sense, you will eventually finish up with one of the sonnets of Shakespeare. . . . it strikes me as a lunatic sort of logic, and I think we should be able to do better.”31

31 The truth is as Professor John Moore declared: “Upon rigorous examination and analysis, any dogmatic assertion . . . that gene mutations are the raw material for any evolutionary process involving natural selection is an utterance of a myth.”32

Answer 5

If you have some time, read this paper by the master professor of population genetics James F. Crow Emeritus University of Wisconsin.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/16/8380