Question

1. Which gene mutation (insertion, deletion, or substitution) appears to have the biggest impact on an amino acid sequence? Explain your answer.​

Answer 1

A frameshift mutation caused by an insertion or deletion of one or more nucleotides in the coding sequence of a gene has the most significant impact on the amino acid sequence of the resulting protein. This is because the genetic code is read in groups of three nucleotides (codons), and an insertion or deletion shifts the reading frame and changes the codon sequence downstream of the mutation. As a result, all the amino acids downstream of the mutation are different from those in the original protein sequence.