which of the following mutation will change the reading frame during translation?

Question

a. a nonsense mutation
b. a missense mutation
c. substitution
d. the addition of one nucleotide
e. none of the above

Answer 1

The correct answer is d. the addition of one nucleotide.

This is because the addition (or deletion) of a single nucleotide in a DNA sequence can cause a frameshift mutation, which alters the reading frame of the codons during translation. This typically results in a completely different sequence of amino acids downstream from the mutation, potentially leading to significant changes in the resulting protein.

Nonsense and missense mutations (choices a and b) involve changes to existing amino acids or the introduction of premature stop codons but do not inherently shift the reading frame. Substitution (choice c) typically refers to a swap of one nucleotide for another without impacting the overall frame. Thus, they would not change the reading frame as the addition of a nucleotide would.