Mutation refers to a heritable change in nucleotide
sequence or number, which occurs due to an alteration in the sequence of the
code in a gene due to change, removal or insertion of one or more bases in agene, and resulting in an altered gene product. This may be expressed by the
change in the structure of a protein which alters or abolishes its enzymatic
properties.
Mutation occurs spontaneously or may be induced by
environmental, industrial, dietary and natural chemicals; it is a cause of
innate metabolic defects in cellular systems, triggering morbidity and
mortality in living organisms. Mutations cause permanent alteration in DNAstructure, which have been implicated in the etiopathology of cancer and otherdegenerative diseases. A plethora of synthetic and natural substances are known
to act as mutagenic, co-carcinogenic and/or carcinogenic agents. These agents
produce a variety of lesions in DNA including strand break, base damage and
dimerization of bases. De Flora et al.
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