Question

“THE BIG DOG ATE ONE ANT.”
Can you help me on question three.? Thanks. (:

1. Do a deletion of the letter G. What sentence results? THE BID OAT EON EAN T.

2. Using the original sentence, do an insertion of the letter K after the letter B. What sentence results? THE BKIG DOG ATE ONE ANT.

3.Are these chromosomal or point mutations? Do they cause more or less change to the original genetic code than the other type?

Answer 1

It would be a point mutation. The difference between us and polymerase is that polymerase can't read. To it, the codons don't mean anything beyond specific amino acids, whereas humans see and recognize words, and if part of a word is missing.

In order to do this, you need to delete the G, but keep "reading" it in 3-letter increments, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. If you were to delete all of the G's, THE BIG DOG ATE ONE ANT would become THE BID OAT EON EAN T. This sort of effect is called a "frame shift" mutation, because it... well, shifts the reading frame.

I won't completely answer the question for you. You can figure out what would happen if you inserted a K in after the B. Just add it in and keep counting forwards with 3-letter words.

This can be a particularly damaging mutation because it disrupts everything else downstream. The words don't make sense, and the amino acids coded for by the rest of the sequence would be completely messed up.

Oddly enough, if you added one more point mutation on (so you had a total of 3 point mutations, or some multiple of 3), you could correct this. Let's say you took out the letter B. THE BID OAT EON EAN T would become THE IDO ATE ONE ANT. It's still a little wonky, but the majority of the sentence has been restored. This can still cause problems, but there are lots of proteins that can still function reasonably well when they're missing a single amino acid.... Hope I helped xD