Mutations

Hello, this isWild Suzhou. Today, we will betalking about mutations, and we will also look at a couple interestingexamples. First, what is amutation? It’s when there’s a change in the structure of a gene. What does thatmean? Genes are what make your hair brown instead of red, or tall instead ofshort. They tell your body what you will look like and how you will survive.They are made from building blocks called nucleotides. There are four differentnucleotides. These are kind of like letters in the alphabet, and if you movethem around you can make different words that mean different things. Genes arelike different words. Now, a mutation iswhen the gene is changed. Think of the letters in the alphabet again. Forexample, maybe your writing a sentence that says “I like chocolate ice cream”but you accidentally write “I like vanilla ice cream” instead. The meaning ofthe sentence has changed. When this happens to a gene, it will not do thethings it is supposed to do. Most of the time, this is not bad, but sometimesit can make people sick. Sometimes, the mutation is worse and instead ofwriting “I like chocolate ice cream” you’ve written something entirelydifferent. This can be much more dangerous. Sometimes, though,mutations can be useful. Have you ever seen a really big strawberry? A mutationhappened which made the strawberry different, so instead of being a normalsized strawberry, it could be double or even triple the size! It can also helpanimals to survive, because if a frog is darker and has more patterns on itsback, it can blend into the environment better and hide from predators. Hopefully, youlearned something new about mutations. Can you think of any mutations thatyou’ve seen before? For Wild Suzhou,I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.