Researchers: A mutational timer is built into DNA chemistry
From ScienceDaily: Every time our cells divide, the DNA within them must replicate so that each new cell receives the same set of instructions. Molecular machines known as polymerases make these copies of DNA by recognizing the shape of the right base pair combinations — G with C and A with T — and adding them into each new double helix, while discarding those that don’t fit together correctly. Though they are good at their job, polymerases are known to slip up from time to time, generating a mistake roughly one out of every 10,000 bases. If not fixed these become immortalized in the genome as a mutation. … The study, published in a 2015 issue of Nature, showed the Read More ›