Question

what happens if a codon gets miscopied

Answer 1

a what 0.0

Answer 2

If a codon is miscopied, then we get something called a "mutation."

You can think of a "mutation" as a "genetic accident."

Some mutations are harmful, like the ones that would place someone at a greater risk for cancer.

And some mutations are actually beneficial. There is one type of mutation that actually makes certain people more resistant to the HIV. (The virus that causes AIDS.)

Answer 3

As an extension to InYourHead, sometimes a mutation will not change anything at all. There are different kinds of mutations; base substitution, insertion, and deletions.

Base substitutions fall into three categories; silent, missense, and nonsense. A silent mutation will have no effects. Since more than one codon codes for a specific amino acid, a simple base substitution may produce the same amino acid. Missense is when the subsitution changes the amino acid. This can have almost no visible effects to large effects, such as Sickle-cell anemia. Nonsense is when the codon is changed into a stop codon, terminating translation of the protein early.

Insertion and deletion mutations either insert or delete a single base or a whole section of DNA. These can cause frameshifts, where after the mutation occurs, the genetic code is translated inccorectly. Consider the sentence "The fat cat sat." where each word represents a codon. If we "delete" the first letter, a framshift occurs, and it is then read as "hef atc ats at", which could code for three completely different amino acids, and then not code the last one at all.