Genetic mutations are changes in a cell's DNA sequence whose effects propagate through the central dogma — DNA transcribed into RNA, whose codons are translated into amino acid sequence — so that their consequences usually, though not always, manifest at the protein level. The fitness value of a mutation is not intrinsic: the same genetic change may be advantageous, deleterious, or neutral depending on mutation type, the environment the organism inhabits, and the trait's interaction with other selective pressures, and a single mutation can simultaneously produce both beneficial and harmful phenotypic effects. The concept belongs to molecular biology and genetics, and supplies the mechanistic link between molecular variation and organism-level phenotype that evolutionary theory acts upon.
Genetic mutations are changes in a cell's DNA sequence whose effects propagate through the central dogma — DNA transcribed into RNA, whose codons are translated into amino acid sequence — so that the…