Question

what type of mutation is most likely to cause the biggest change in a protein? explain why.

Answer 1

The most serious of these mutations will be the insertion of 2 bases. Becasue the genetic code is read in triplets, a 2 base insetion will alter the reading frame of the code causing a frameshift mutation meaning every amino acid after the site of the mutation will be incorrect. This will cause huge structural changes to the protien.

Whereas the 15 base deletion will only remove those 5 amino acids, but as a multiple of 3, the remaining sequesnce will be unchanged so the ammount of structual change to the protein will be smaller. A substituation mutation simply swaps one base for another so will only affect 1 amino acid.