Mutation

Life not only reproduced and spread, it also changed. We will see many changes as we follow the story of life. How did these changes happen?

We normally think of mistakes and accidents as bad. But sometimes they are good. Our own mistakes give us the chance to learn, to discover something new. So it was with life.

Mistakes sometimes happened when genes reproduced.

A base of one nucleic acid could be changed into another base. These mistakes are called mutations. They could be caused by sunlight, by harmful chemicals or by radioactive atoms in the Earth.

The two genes which grew upon these two halves were different from each other. They carried information for different proteins.