MUTATION • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Mutation

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/mjutˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

mutation n.

1.

Change; alteration, either in form or qualities. "The vicissitude or mutations in the superior globe are no fit matter for this present argument."

2.

(Biol.) Gradual definitely tending variation, such as may be observed in a group of organisms in the fossils of successive geological levels.

3.

(Biol.)

(a)

As now employed (first by de Vries), a cellular process resulting in a sudden inheritable variation (the offspring differing from its parents in some well-marked character or characters) as distinguished from a gradual variation in which the new characters become fully developed only in the course of many generations. The occurrence of mutations, the selection of strains carrying mutations permitting enhanced survival under prevailing conditions, and the mechanism of hereditary of the characters so appearing, are well-established facts; whether and to what extent the mutation process has played the most important part in the evolution of the existing species and other groups of organisms is an unresolved question.

(b)

The result of the above process; a suddenly produced variation. Note: Mutations can occur by a change in the fundamental coding sequence of the hereditary material, which in most organisms is DNA, but in some viruses is RNA. It can also occur by rearrangement of an organism's chromosomes. Specific mutations due to a change in DNA sequence have been recognized as causing certain specific hereditary diseases. Certain processes which produce variation in the genotype of an organism, such as sexual mixing of chromosomes in offspring, or artificially induced recombination or introduction of novel genetic material into an organism, are not referred to as mutation.

4.

(Biol.) A variant strain of an organism in which the hereditary variant property is caused by a mutation (3).

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Etymology of 'Mutation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mutation" Quotes from Famous Books

... believe that this is a true statement of what happened in the fruitful 'nineties. McClure's was not, speaking biologically, a new species at all; it was only a mutation in which the recessive traits of the old magazine became dominant while the invaluable type was preserved. To speak more plainly, the literary magazine, as America knew it, had always printed news, matured ...

— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... was here! Hedged about with provisions, curtailed and limited, here nevertheless was an acorn out of which, by natural growth and some mutation, was to come popular government wide and deep. The planting of this small seed of freedom here, in 1619, upon the banks of the James in Virginia, is an ...

— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... time of this mutation No man can finden out with all his pains. For the small sphears of humane reason run Too swift within his narrow compast brains. But that vast Orb of Providence contains A wider period; turneth still and ...

— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... the rocks with a suddenness hard to reconcile with Lyell's doctrine of uniformitarianism, just as new species appear in the life of the globe with an abruptness hard to reconcile with Darwin's slow process of natural selection. Is sudden mutation, after all, the key ...

— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... appears to me to be fraught with more fatal consequences than any other scheme having no relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been devised. If any single scheme could produce the effect of arresting at once that mutation of condition by which thousands of our most indigent fellow-citizens by their industry and enterprise are raised to the possession of wealth, that is the one. If there is one measure better calculated than another to produce that state of things so much deprecated ...

— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson

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