I have great news.
You don't have to watch a movie to see a genetic mutant.
You're surrounded by mutants.
You probably are a mutant.
But how do mutations work, and when can we expect to see your genetic superpowers?
Let's find out.
It takes a staggering amount of genetic information to make you who you are.
You have just over 3 billion DNA pairs in your genome.
If you were to print your genome in a set of hardcover books, you know, for posterity.
Great Uncle John's big book of genes.
That one set of books would be over five hundred times as long as the Harry Potter series.
And your normal body cells have twice that amount of information, with two slightly different
copies in each cell!
So Great Uncle John's big book of genes is really, really big.
Every time your cells divide, they split the DNA in half and make a copy of the whole thing.
How long do you think it takes to copy a thousand Harry Potter series, letter for letter?
[pause] It takes an hour.
Let that sink in.
One hour.
Your cells are copying information faster than a procrastinating student on the day
their 20-page final essay is due.
And they copy AMAZINGLY well.
We are still figuring out the numbers, but it's something like 60 errors during this
copying.
And your cells have error-checking molecules that come along afterwards and fix almost
all of those errors.
Okay, now let's talk about those mutations.
Most mutations are when one letter of the genetic sequence is replaced with a different
letter.
Let's use a sentence from Harry Potter to see what that means.
"Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and threw himself into an armchair in front of
the fire."
-JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
"Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and threu himself into an armchair in front of
the fire."
This is a nonsense mutation where a letter is turned into a STOP.
"Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak an."
Some mutations, though, change the meaning of a gene.
"Harry pulled off the Invisibility Clock and threw himself into an armchair in front of
the fire."
That sentence doesn't mean the same thing it used to.
What is an invisibility clock?
It's something new!
Then there are the really bad mutations.
This is a deletion mutation where we lose most of the paragraph.
"Harry pulled off the Invisibility Clowas sitting in the fire."
And frameshift mutations happen because DNA doesn't have spaces or punctuation to differentiate
between words, so a shift in letters can shift the whole rest of the sequence.
"Harry pulle dof fth eInvisibilit yCloa kan dthre whimsel fint oa narmchai ri nfron to
fth efire."
I would like to take a moment now and be amazed at how anything can be alive.
Thank you.
What causes mutations?
Like we said, there are sometimes errors in copying DNA.
There is also a thing called recombination, where DNA in one group gets mixed up with
DNA from another group.
That can lead to extra copies of genes, or deleting genes.
Some chemicals damage DNA in different ways.
And radiation is varying degrees of bad depending on its strength.
UV light from the sun can bump DNA apart, which rarely causes mutations.
Gamma rays have way more energy and can cause double-strand DNA breaks, which are much more
likely to result in mutations and also death.
If we live in a world with mutation-causing chemicals and solar radiation, how can anything
live?
We have enzymes that repair DNA and correct errors.
And oddly enough, almost all mutations have no effect at all.
Nothing good, nothing bad, just invisibly present.
Most of the remaining mutations are bad, leading to impaired or dead cells.
Or in the worst case, to diseases like cancer.
But every now and then, a chance within a chance, something good happens.
A baby is born with slightly higher resistance to malaria, or the ability to eat milk into
adulthood, that gives them a slightly better chance of survival.
These genes tend to spread through the population.
And as they spread, they combine with other useful genes.
These superpowers accumulate over generations.
And the result is the 6 billion bits of gene data that turned into you.
How super is that?
Thanks for taking the time to learn about your mutant powers.
I hope you use them responsibly.
If you would like to know more about the amazing properties of Life, you can watch one of these
videos, and you can subscribe to know when a new combination of information pops up.
Thanks for stopping by this week to learn what makes Life awesome!