Quote:
Originally Posted by marki
If my distant memories of my molecular biology and gentics lectures serves me (it was a very long time ago  ) you can expect numerous mutations to occur in a very short period of time but these are mostly reversed by the SOS mechanism in cells. Remember much of the genetic material is non coding so it would have to occur in an active region which is why the idea of interupting gene expression/regulation is very interesting. I think the main effect of mutated RNA would simply mean defective construction of protein chains which would be recognised as rubbish and be promptly broken down. At worst it would mean an inability to perform some function, at best the ability to perform a new fuction depending on the nature of the resulting protien chain. If the mutation of DNA was isolated to a few cells then it would have little effect excepting cancer or HIV etc. |
I think the point you say here is absolutely true - but it is not
zero probability. If 99.9999% is killed - 0.0001% is all that is needed to change it.
Proteins variations are also interesting. I.e. Muscle proteins, for example, can be grossly different from one species to another. If I can recalled, cell sheath proteins is monkeys are different than humans. This accounts for their overall strength of monkeys per unit muscle than us humans.