Point Mutation

In point mutation, one strand of amino acid changes the structure of the codon and thus leads to a different gene. In this case, one nucleotide of an RNA or DNA is deleted, changed, or added. A point mutation can occur in the change of a DNA strand to a protein. RNA and DNA are double helix strands. Carbon and phosphates make the base and the nitrogenous strands make the middle (Zou, Mali, Huang, Dowey, & Cheng, 2011). Cytosine pairs with guanine. Adenine pairs with thymine in DNA and pairs with uracil in the RNA. The formation of DNA into protein is through transcription of the DNA by the messenger RNA (mRNA).

A point mutation can also occur through a mutation that spontaneously occurs during DNA replication. The mutagens are the environmental factors that can change an organisms DNA. The functions of the hypothetical genes change through the change of the composition of the DNA structure. The change happens when a nucleotide is substituted, and new codon forms, which is a stop codon instead of a codon that codes for a different amino acid sequence. In this case, the production of the amino acid chain stops (Zou, Mali, Huang, Dowey, & Cheng, 2011). The event happens at the end of the mRNA sequence, but if it occurs before, it stops the development of amino acid, thus prevents the formation of the right protein.

The DNA sequence can change when a nucleotide is substituted, but the resultant does not form the stop amino acids but a new sequence of amino acids. In this case, the direction of the production of a new protein will change; however, it will still form (Huang et al., 2015). The other form of change in the protein formation is where the nucleotide is substituted, but the resultant codon is the same as the amino acid that was to be formed. The two scenarios form the missense and silent mutation, respectively

Reference

Huang, X., Wang, Y., Yan, W., Smith, C., Ye, Z., Wang, J., … & Cheng, L. (2015). Production of Gene‐Corrected Adult Beta Globin Protein in Human Erythrocytes Differentiated from Patient i PSC s After Genome Editing of the Sickle Point Mutation. Stem cells, 33(5), 1470-1479.Zou, J., Mali, P., Huang, X., Dowey, S. N., & Cheng, L. (2011). Site-specific gene correction of a point mutation in human iPS cells derived from an adult patient with sickle cell disease. Blood, 118(17), 4599-4608.