Which of the following mutations would be most likely to have a h...

Question

Which of the following mutations would be most likely to have a harmful effect on an organism?
a. a deletion of three nucleotides near the middle of a gene
b. a single nucleotide deletion in the middle of an intron
c. a single nucleotide deletion near the end of the coding sequence
d. a single nucleotide insertion downstream of, and close to, the start of the coding sequence

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone here. We have a question that asks why is the deletion of three nucleotides considered to be less dangerous than the deletion of a single nucleotide? And this is because the deletion of three nucleotides will result in the deletion of a single amino acid. The rest of the reading frame is not going to be altered. So we're just deleting a single amino acid instead of altering the entire sequence. So our answer here, A deletion of three nucleotides will not produce any protein is incorrect. B deletion of three nucleotides is automatically corrected. That's incorrect. C deletion of three nucleotides will stop the translation process. That is incorrect. Our answer is the deletion of three nuclear ties will not alter the reading frame of the succeeding sequences. Thank you for watching. Bye.

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