Mutation: The Key to Our Evolution

In genetics, a mutation is a modification of the genome of an organism, virus, or extra chromosomal DNA in the nucleotide sequence. Either DNA or RNA is present in viral genomes. Mutations result from DNA or viral replication errors, mitosis, or meiosis or other types of DNA damage that may then be subject to error-prone repair, cause error during other repair forms, or cause replication error (translation synthesis). Due to mobile genetic elements, mutations can also arise from the addition or deletion of segments of DNA.