Introductory Microbiology (1+1)

Spontaneous and induced mutation

Spontaneous and induced mutation
The natural radiation (cosmic rays, U.V. rays etc) alter the genotype of an organism which is called spontaneous mutation. Induction of mutation by some agents artificially is referred as induced mutation.

Point mutation
Mutation occurs in one or two base pairs of a gene is referred as point mutation. The other mutation is change in the segment of chromosome, referred as chromosomal aberrations. Since bacteria are having single filamentous double strand DNA as their genome, the point mutation is a common one.