Base-Pair Insertion and Deletion

Molecule Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Base-Pair Insertion and Deletion

Provides a quick introduction of base-pair insertion and deletion, where some nucleotide base pairs are inserted into or deleted from the original gene sequence.

What Is Base-Pair Insertion and Deletion? - A base-pair insertion and deletion is a gene mutation where some nucleotides are inserted into or deleted from the original gene sequence.

This type of gene mutation is dangerous because it alters the template from which amino acids are read. Insertions and deletions can cause frame-shift mutations when base pairs that are not a multiple of three are added to or deleted from the sequence. Since the nucleotide sequences are read in groupings of three, this will cause a shift in the reading frame.

For example, you can read 4 codon frames from this DNA sequence: CGA-CCA-ACG-GCG. But if 2 nucleotides, GA, are inserted after position 6, the reading frames are changed to: CGA-CCA-(GA)A-CGG-CG.