What is the worst kind of mutation?

And why? I'm trying to understand this for my molecular biology class. I would assume that a frameshift mutation would be the most detrimental but... ... Technically the added junk from a frame shift could confer functions that render a cell or organism worse off than if the protein were just truncated. read more

point mutations: point mutations are were a single base is changed, most point mutations are invisible. * a nonsense mutation is usually pretty darn bad: Gens often encode for proteins. Proteins are made out of Amino acids. read more

If by 'worst' you mean causes the greatest alteration of the genetic code then the answer is deletion and insertion. These are frameshift mutations and cause all of the genetic code to be read incorrectly after such an alteration in the DNA bases. The other type of chromosomal mutations are inversion and substitution. read more

A substitution is a mutation that exchanges one base for another (i.e., a change in a single"chemical letter" such as switching an A to a G). Such a substitution could: change a codon to one that encodes a different amino acid and cause a small change in the protein produced. read more