Nature 335, 142 - 145 (08 September 1988); doi:10.1038/335142a0

The origin of mutants

John Cairns, Julie Overbaugh & Stephan Miller

Department of Cancer Biology, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

Nucleic acids are replicated with conspicuous fidelity. Infrequently, however, they undergo changes in sequence, and this process of change (mutation) generates the variability that allows evolution. As the result of studies of bacterial variation, it is now widely believed that mutations arise continuously and without any consideration for their utility. In this paper, we briefly review the source of this idea and then describe some experiments suggesting that cells may have mechanisms for choosing which mutations will occur.

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