Which of the following is an example of a mutation type?

• A. Replication
• B. Transcription
• C. Point mutation
• D. Translation

Answer: (C)

Mutations are changes in the DNA sequence, and a mutation type refers to how the sequence is altered. A point mutation is a change of a single nucleotide base in the DNA (or a single base pair). This directly alters the genetic material and can have different outcomes, such as changing a codon to code for a different amino acid (missense), creating a stop codon (nonsense), or not changing the amino acid at all (silent). The other options describe processes involved in using genetic information—replication copies DNA, transcription makes RNA from DNA, and translation makes protein from RNA—rather than changes to the DNA sequence itself.