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Related Concept Videos

Mutations in Microorganisms01:18

Mutations in Microorganisms

Mutations are heritable changes in an organism’s genome involving alterations in the base sequence of DNA or RNA. These changes can influence cellular processes and phenotypic traits, potentially transforming the unaltered wild type into a mutant form. Such changes, termed forward mutations, are pivotal in shaping the genetic diversity of organisms.RNA viruses exhibit the highest mutation rates due to the absence of robust proofreading mechanisms during genome replication. In contrast,...
Spontaneous and Induced Mutations01:30

Spontaneous and Induced Mutations

Spontaneous mutations arise infrequently during DNA replication due to errors in the process. A key factor behind these errors is tautomeric shifts in nitrogenous bases, where bases transition from keto to enol forms or amino to imino forms. This shift can alter base-pairing rules, leading to mutations. Additionally, reactive oxygen species (ROS) arising from aerobic metabolism can damage DNA, resulting in depurination (loss of a purine base) or depyrimidination (loss of a pyrimidine base).
Mutations01:35

Mutations

Mutations are changes in the sequence of DNA. These changes can occur spontaneously or they can be induced by exposure to environmental factors. Mutations can be characterized in a number of different ways: whether and how they alter the amino acid sequence of the protein, whether they occur over a small or large area of DNA, and whether they occur in somatic cells or germline cells.
Chromosomal Alterations Are Large-Scale Mutations
While point mutations are changes in a single nucleotide in...
Mutations01:39

Mutations

Overview
Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift01:09

Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift

In a population that is not at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of alleles changes over time. Therefore, any deviations from the five conditions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium can alter the genetic variation of a given population. Conditions that change the genetic variability of a population include mutations, natural selection, non-random mating, gene flow, and genetic drift (small population size).Mechanisms of Genetic VariationThe original sources of genetic variation are mutations,...
Mismatch Repair01:20

Mismatch Repair

Organisms are capable of detecting and fixing nucleotide mismatches that occur during DNA replication. This sophisticated process requires identifying the new strand and replacing the erroneous bases with correct nucleotides. Mismatch repair is coordinated by many proteins in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
The Mutator Protein Family Plays a Key Role in DNA Mismatch Repair
The human genome has more than 3 billion base pairs of DNA per cell. Prior to cell division, that vast amount of genetic...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 16, 2026

Optogenetic Random Mutagenesis Using Histone-miniSOG in C. elegans
04:51

Optogenetic Random Mutagenesis Using Histone-miniSOG in C. elegans

Published on: November 14, 2016

Spontaneous mutations decrease sensitivity of gene expression to random environmental variation in Caenorhabditis

Charles F Baer1, Dee R Denver

  • 1Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America. cbaer@ufl.edu

Plos One
|January 22, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Deleterious mutations reduce gene expression variance, making traits less sensitive to environmental changes. This suggests gene expression variability underlies phenotypic robustness, a key concept in evolutionary biology.

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Last Updated: Jun 16, 2026

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Measuring Oxidative Stress Resistance of Caenorhabditis elegans in 96-well Microtiter Plates
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Surveying Low-Cost Methods to Measure Lifespan and Healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans
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Surveying Low-Cost Methods to Measure Lifespan and Healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans

Published on: May 18, 2022

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Genetics
  • Developmental Biology

Background:

  • Phenotypic robustness, or canalization, describes traits stable despite environmental or genetic variation.
  • Underlying mechanisms must vary to compensate for external perturbations.
  • Deleterious mutations are known to increase trait sensitivity to environmental changes, a process termed de-canalization.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the effect of deleterious mutations on gene expression variance.
  • To test the hypothesis that reduced gene expression variability contributes to phenotypic de-canalization.

Main Methods:

  • Compared transcript abundance of over 7,000 genes using microarray analysis.
  • Utilized four mutation accumulation (MA) lines of *Caenorhabditis elegans* and their common ancestor.
  • Employed a dye-swap methodology for accurate gene expression comparison.

Main Results:

  • Mutation accumulation lines exhibited significantly less environmental variance in transcript abundance compared to the ancestor.
  • This reduction in variance was observed both among gene replicates and across different genes.
  • Deleterious mutations consistently decreased the within-line variance component of transcript abundance.

Conclusions:

  • Deleterious mutations decrease gene expression sensitivity to environmental variation.
  • This finding supports the hypothesis that variability in gene expression is mechanistically linked to phenotypic robustness.
  • Reduced gene expression plasticity may be a consequence of accumulated mutations.