In this part of the biosimulation you are going to investigate the effects of mutating a sequence of RNA and observing the consequences on the final polypeptide. You will then classify the kinds of mutations according to their results.
Mutations occur when DNA molecules are exposed to agents known as mutagens.
In almost every case the original sequence of bases is altered. When the DNA message is transcribed into a messenger RNA molecule, the mistakes caused by the mutagen are also copied. The mRNA molecule is now carrying the altered coding sequence. As the mRNA molecule is translated into a polypeptide sequence, any mistakes in the message result in altered amino acid sequences in the final protein. Mutagenesis affects DNA, but in this exercise you will skip that stage and simply alter the mRNA molecule directly.