Question

While mRNA strands are being created, a sequence is sometimes miscopied. What will be the long-term effect of this on the cell?
(A) Ribosomes may be destroyed.
(B) Translation may not take place.
(C)The damaged mRNA may cause cell death.
(D) mRNA mutation will pass to all new cells.

Answer 1

B. More specifically, translation probably will start - unless the miscopy affects the start codon or the Shine Delgarno sequence - but the protein product will be truncated if an inappropriate stop codon has been introduced or non- or differently functional depending on what sort of mutation has occurred.

The ribosome is just the scaffold on which the new protein is assembled - it won't be affected by what that protein actually is. Similarly, it's really unlikely that one transcriptional miscopy will cause cell death, nor can the mRNA mutation pass to all cells because mRNA is not hereditary material (I guess the mRNA which is present in a dividing cell gets passed on to both its progeny cells, but let's not be technical here.)