Question

Mutations are changes in the DNA sequence of a cell. Describe two ways in which a mutation in the genome of a cell does not affect ANY cellular activity

Answer 1

The two ways in which there is no affect of mutation on the cellular activity are:

1. Mutation occurs in the non coding regions (introns) of the DNA. This region does not contribute in the encoding of protein sequences. Thus, there will not be any affect on the cellular activity due to mutation in introns.

2. Mutation occurs in coding regions (exons) of DNA but the mutation does not result in the change of an amino acid sequence which encodes the protein. This is sometimes known as synonymous substitution. Due to this reason the mutation will not affect any cellular activity.