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Though we should certainly stay away from mutagens like cigarette smoke and nuclear waste, mutations are something we all acquire — billions over a lifetime — because they are inevitable consequence of being alive. We are all mutants, and with recent large-scale genetic studies, scientists are gaining a better understanding of the role of mutations in our lives, and in the human population as a whole.
The term “mutation” means different things to different people, but as used by geneticists, it usually refers to newly acquired changes in our DNA. New mutations are a subset of the broader category of genetic “variants,” which include millions of DNA differences between individuals. Most of these genetic variants already exist in the human gene pool—they arose as new mutations a long time ago, and have been passed down for generations. Most of the genetic variants in our genomes are inherited from our parents, who in turn inherited their variants from their parents, and so on. These pre-existing variants are the major genetic influence on who we are, and they explain why we resemble our biological relatives.
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But each of us also acquires brand-new mutations during our lives. Some of these are caused by dangerous environmental factors, like cigarette smoke. Most, however, are a byproduct of life’s most fundamental processes, small chemical accidents that occasionally mar our DNA and genetic typos that occur as our genome gets copied over and over to produce the trillions of cells of which we’re composed.
Read full, original post: Why We’re All Mutants
