Question

A section of DNA encodes a gene for an enzyme involved in cellular metabolism. If a mutation event occurs that results in the deletion of one base near the beginning of this sequence, which of the following is the most likely outcome?
A. The loss of one base may or may not seriously affect the protein synthesized, depending on which base is lost.
B. The protein synthesized may contain only one erroneous amino acid since the loss of one base will cause one codon to be misread during transcription.
C. The protein synthesized will contain many erroneous amino acids since the loss of one base will shift the reading of the encoded base sequence.
D. The loss of one base will not seriously affect the protein synthesized from the DNA sequence.

Answer 1

Answer:

The correct answer would be C. The protein synthesized will contain many erroneous amino acids since the loss of one base will shift the reading of the encoded base sequence.

Deletion mutation that does not occur in the multiple of three bases can results in frame-shift mutation.

It changes the reading frame of nucleotide in DNA. Thus, the reading frame of codons in mRNA would also change.

Consequently, the sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide chain would change or alter. Thus, a protein would contain many erroneous amino acids.

An example of the same is shown below in the image.