Chapter 9 & 10: Subviral Agents Flashcards
Mutation
heritable change in genome
can lead to change in properties of an organism, can be beneficial, detrimental or have no effect
prokaryotes accumulate mutations ______ because of _________ growth
quickly, exponential
horizontal gene transfer
generates larger changes (than mutations)
2 factors thats fuel evolution
mutation and genetic exchange
bacteria can/cannot exchange genes
can
genomes of cells
contain double stranded DNA
viral genomes
contain double or single stranded DNA or RNA
wild-type strain
isolated from nature, refer to individual or one gene
mutant
cell/virus derived from wild type that carries genotype change
genome
nucleotide sequence
selectable mutations
contain an advantage, progeny cells outcompete parent, easy to detect and can be used as a genetic tool
example of selectable mutations
antibiotic resistance
non selectable mutations
do not contain an advantage, may still change phenotype, very hard to detect
example of non selectable mutation
color loss in pigmented organism
Ways to isolate mutants
selection and screening
spontaneous mutations
occur without external intervention, most result from errors by DNA polymerase during replication
induced muations
caused environmentally or deliberately, can result from exposure to radiation or chemicals that modify DNA
point mutations
change in only one base pair, occurs via single bp substitution, phenotypic change depends on location
types of base pair mutations
missense, nonsense, silent
silent mutations
do not affect sequence of amino acids due to degeneracy
no change in phenotype
almost always change in third base (in reading frame) of codon
missense mutation
changes sequence of amino acids
may alter activity
nonsense mutation
causes a stop codon where it doesn’t belong, results in truncated protein
lacks normal activity
frameshift mutation
single (or double) bp deletion or insertion that results in shift of reading frame
scrambles entire protein
can lead to a premature stop codon
insertion/deletion of three base pairs
adds or deletes an entire codon/amino acid, usually not as bad
insertions and deletions
can result in gain or loss off 100s to 1000s of bps, results in complete loss of gene function, can be lethal
may arise from errors during recombinations
large insertions may be from transposable elements
mutation rates
in microorganisms, 10^-6 to 10^-7 per kb
(single gene is ~1kb)
eukaryotes 10 fold lower
DNA viruses 100-1000x higher
RNA viruses even higher
Mutagens
agents that increase mutation rates
three types of mutagens
chemical, physical, biological