As many of us seem to be experiencing, the Ask A Scientist website is more like a "Post a Question to a 'Scientist' and hope that it gets answered" website, as answers to proposed questions are not being returned. Regardless, I took some time this past week to merely talk with my colleagues at school regarding my question, namely our Biology teacher and 8th grade science teacher. As I too would have guessed, mutations do happen quite frequently in our bodies, but are often manifested in non-harmful ways (i.e. freckles, "beauty" marks, etc), while others do not show at all (i.e. silent mutations). Mutations that obviously do manifest as harmful are those such as cancers, which are commonly helped along by environmental influences.
We copy 300 million cells per day via mitosis, so mutation is bound to occur, but it is not something that we need to dwell on.
My Ask a Scientist question was: How frequently do mutations occur during interphase of mitosis where DNA replication takes place? How does this affect our body if the ultimate goal of mitosis is to create two identical body cells? Where can these affects be observed?
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