DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transforms Our View of Evolution - SciTechDaily

Mutations of DNA do not occur as randomly as previously assumed, according to new research from Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen in Germany and University of California Davis in the US.

“This is a completely novel perspective on mutation and the way evolution works,” comments Detlef Weigel, scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Biology and senior author of the study.

Credit: Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen.

Such harmful mutations would normally be quickly removed by the selection pressures that prevail in nature and therefore disappear before they could be observed.

Instead, they found stretches of the genome where mutations were rare, and others where mutations were much more common.

In those regions with few mutations, genes needed in every cell and thus essential for the survival of every plant were greatly overrepresented.

“These are regions of the genome most sensitive to harmful effects of new mutations,” Weigel says, “and DNA damage repair seems therefore to be particularly effective in these regions.”  It is as if evolution were playing with loaded dice – it minimizes the risk of damaging the most vital genes.

Credit: Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen.

Weigel stressed how entirely unexpected the results were in the light of classical evolutionary theory: “It has long been known that during the course of evolution certain regions of the genome accumulate more mutations than other regions do.

However, despite the uneven distribution of mutations in a typical genome, the important regions are not entirely devoid of them, and these regions can therefore also evolve, although at a slower pace than other parts of the genome. .

Most of the work was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Biology (formerly the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology), and it is now being continued both there and at UC Davis.

Or, might it be that mutations in these critical regions result in the plant’s seeds not germinating, or dying before they can even flower, and therefore give the appearance of few mutations

January 13, 2022

January 13, 2022

January 13, 2022

January 13, 2022

January 13, 2022

January 13, 2022