noelkurtz at aol.com (NoelKurtz) writes:
>As an amateur biologist, I'm curious if anyone has proposed the existance
>of, or discovered, "mutation genes?"
Sure. There are plenty of these which work by many different mechanisms.
Some genes suppress mutation, such as DNA repair genes, and when these
genes mutate the rate of mutation in the rest of the genome increases
due to loss of function. Mutations which occur in the codon region of
tRNA also effectively increase mutations in other genes by causing the
"wrong" amino acids to be incorporated into polypeptides. There are a
veriety of others, as well.
Check out any college genetics text. You will find a discussion there.
Nick Landau
Dept. Biochemistry and Microbiology
Rutgers University, NJ
nlandau at eden.rutgers.edu
