The answer is 'Cambrian' explosion. This took place approximately 541 million years ago. 'Explosion' refers to the evolution of a large range of new major animal phyla. Scientists know this by the large number of diverse fossils from this period. Prior to this period, organisms were single-celled, but over the Cambrian Explosion, lasting about 80 million years, life forms diversified rapidly to resemble the life forms existing today.
Answer:
It would most likely render the protein nonfunctional or mis-functional.
The mutation could result in three outcomes:
- Silent mutation, which changes the codon to the same amino acid. (AAA->AAG, both are lysine). But since the problem specified that it has a "slightly different amino acid sequence," we can assume this doesn't happen.
- Nonsense mutation, which changes a codon to a stop codon. This would end the chain of amino acids, making the protein potentially nonfunctional.
- Missense mutation, which changes a codon to another completely different codon. This can be harmful, as in sickle-cell disease, where just one amino acid, glutamic acid, is changed to valine.
