May 28, 2025 • 12 mins
All sorts of exotic and often terrible stuff runs through our heads when we think of genetic mutations, but the vast majority of them are caught before they happen thanks to the crack teams replicating our DNA in our cells.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and this is Short Stuff, The Mysteries of Genetic
Mutations Edition.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right, because we're gonna talk about the X Men.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, a mutation. I mean, I don't know if it
would help you join x men, But there are mutations
that alter people, sometimes in positive ways. We usually associated
with negative stuff, like a congenital disease or something. A
lot of them are neutral, I think actually the vast
majority are neutral. They don't really have any noticeable effect.
(00:38):
Some are beneficial. Lactose intolerance, immunity to malaria, when someone's
vestigial tale turns into a glorious full tale. Those are
all beneficial genetic mutations. But all of them share something
in common, and that is that the replication of the
person's genome had some sort of error while it was
(01:02):
being copied.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Is lactose intolerance a beneficial No lactose tolerance, I think
I thought you said intolerance.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, So lactose intolerance is apparently the
base line the default lactose tolerance is from a genetic mutation.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
All right, well, let's get into this. Let's talk about
DNA or deoxy riboonucleic acid as we all like to
call it, such a great word around the campfire. That's
a molecule that's going to carry genetic material almost said
mutation when you're developing as a as a future human.
And structurally, I think we've all seen the If you've
(01:43):
seen Jurassic Park, you've seen what these double this double
helix looks like it's a long molecule comprised of nucleotides
and there been you know, there's two strands to that
coil that formed the double helix that kind of wind
around each other. And that's that's what the DNA, the
(02:04):
full DNA what would you call it, just molecule looks.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Like the genome. Yeah, the molecule DNA is a molecule. Yeah,
and you said it man, it is long. Apparently if
you stretched it out, it would be about two meters
or six feet tall, if you could figure out how
to stretch it out. It's amazing. And it's made of
three point one billion base pairs of nucleotides, thymine, cytosine, guanine,
(02:28):
and adenine, and adenine goes with thymine, and cytosine goes
with guanine and you put all that together. Just with
those combinations, you have a a galaxy of different code
that's embedded into the DNA that serves as how like,
(02:50):
it tells the rest of your body, each cell what
it's supposed to do and how to do it. And
usually that has to do with expressing proteins.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, and you know, like you mentioned, as the cells
divide and the DNA is making copies of itself, there
might be errors here and there, and that's where those
mutations come from. And then if they're in the egg
and sperm cells, that those are going to be passed
on to the next generation. So that's a genetic mutation
that's going to carry on and cause disease or genetic disorders.
(03:20):
You can also have what's called a somatic mutation, and
that only affects you. It's not inherited by your future.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Kids, right exactly. So really the big problem is genes,
like a gene not being replicated correctly, and a gene
is just a stretch of nucleotide base pairs along your
genome that together shows how to encode a protein. It's
the instructions to how to do a specific thing. And
(03:48):
again it's just a segment along your DNA, and when
that stuff gets copied, if there's any kind of error,
like say you match up an AD nine to a cytosine,
it's going to prevent that cellular process that whatever the
gene is telling the cell to do to not be
able to be performed correctly, hence some mutation.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, and our cells are constantly copying themselves, either replacing
old cells or damage cells. And when that happens, when
they're doing that copy, that double stranded DNA is going
to split into the two parts and each strand is
copied on its own and then they come back together.
And when that happens, there can be errors. The good
news is it's approximately one in every one hundred million
(04:35):
replications this happens. So that's a you know, that's a
pretty good statistic to have in your hip pocket. The
other good news is DNA knows what it's doing, so
it generally knows when an error happens, and they try
to and often can repair and correct that before any
problems arise.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yes, I think that's a pretty good place to take
a break, Chuck. So let's take a break, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Shot shot.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Okay. So there's basically two ways that you can that
a genetic mutation can develop, the cell replication, which we've
talked a lot about, and then environmental influences. And there's
actually different ways that can happen. Even during cell replication.
There's tautumeric shifts, which is where the nucleotide itself undergoes
(05:47):
a quick chemical reaction to where suddenly adnine turns into
I don't know, silver just for a second and then
it eventually turns back. But if that if that adnine
nucleotide is being copied at that moment, you're going to
have a silver nucleotide in your DNA.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Silver just don't work when it comes to making proteins.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, so that's sort of due to bad timing. Another
thing that can happen as far as those errors go,
it's called mispairing. And was this a house Off Works article?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yes, it was.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, they did a pretty good job of putting this
in terms we could understand. If you imagine those two
DNA strands that work together are zipped together like a zipper.
Sometimes that zipper doesn't.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Align and get stuck in it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh my god, And that can happen when the DNA
is getting zipped back up, and that can cause parts
of it to be skipped over or maybe something added
that shouldn't be right.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And then the third way that a mutation can happen
during replication is what's called jumping genes cousins of jumping jacks,
and that is where so these genes are normally I
don't understand this fully, but gene which again are just
stretches of code on your DNA, can actually move. They
can change positions, they can change places. Sometimes they replicate themselves,
(07:08):
and the replicant goes and embeds itself in another segment
of your DNA, And if it does so in a
gene another gene, then it's going to mess up that
gene's ability to perform its function. Did not know that
that was a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Did not either, had never heard of jumping genes. I've
heard of jumping beans and jumping jacks, but never jumping genes.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Very nice. So that's the.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Ways that can happen. As far as like an error
occurring in your body on a cellular level, you mentioned
external factors. One of the big ones, and I didn't
know to this extent even is radiation and you might
be thinking like, yeah, so you just don't get X
rayed when you're pregnant, like that solves everything, right, That's
(07:55):
not necessarily a case, because UV radiation can be a
very big cause of mutations, specifically when it's called like
a sunburn on your DNA. If you have too much
UV radiation, you can they can form something called how
would you say.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That, I'm going to say perimidin dimers.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Perimeding dimers, And I looked, I was.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Like, is that a misprint? Is it supposed to be dimmers?
And Nope.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Now it's dimers and especially diming dimers that can distort
that DNA structure. And that's sort of like a sunburn
on the DNA, and that happens when a couple of
DNA building blocks are stuck together, and that's oftentimes caused
from you know, sun exposure.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, there's also chemical factors too, which are basically biological
or environmental factors. Essentially, what it is is there's different
kinds of chemicals that can make their way into the
DNA in the nucleus of a cell and just mess
with it. Sometimes they nucleotides and they get pulled in
(09:03):
like like just some guy walking down the street getting
pulled into the Jimmy Fallon Late Night Show because they
couldn't get enough people to fill seats. That can happen
during DNA reproduction replication, and when that nucleotide that didn't
mean to be there gets entered into that the new
code of DNA again, problems arise. That's a mutation.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
The problems arise when they have to sit there and
watch Jimmy Fallon. Oh man, boy, I'm gonna hear it.
They're also biological factors like a virus can cause that
can get in the DNA and that can lead to mutations.
And then there's some other environmental stuff as well, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
De animating agents they actually remove parts of our DNA.
Substances like stuff found in cigarette smoke can stick to
the DNA like so much tar and change the shape
of the DNA. Essentially, you don't want anything going anywhere
near your DNA. And if there's something that happens, and
it happens on an important gene, that mutation is going
(10:07):
to produce some sort of problems down the line. But
our body is actually really really good at either preventing
these errors or correcting them. When it finds them, which
is just mind boggling to me.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, it's super cool that our body can do this.
Sometimes it's like it's called a direct fix and these
are these are just small little errors. Like they likened
it to a road crack, and they also likened it
to just a quick patch on that road. The cell
just directly fixes it super quick.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Like yeah, and we should say the cell the Yeah,
the cell that's transcribing the DNA is aware of it
because there are different different molecules that proofread the newly
created DNA to make sure it matches the original.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, it is. So if they find a mismatch, if
they find just some stretch it could be big, small, whatever,
they'll actually cut it out excision. They'll digest it and
then they'll reproduce the correct version of it and then
connect it to that part that they cut out of
the DNA and then zip it together.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And if it's if a whole section of DNA gets damaged,
they can go to another DNA strand and say, hey,
I'm glad you're here because we're gonna use you now
to come fix this other strand.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, thank god you're here. They were about to pull
us into Jimmy Fallon and we needed something to do.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
That's a off said thing in my house. Thank God
I was here because I know we mentioned one of
the roses the movie How It Holds Up. That's one
of the great lines from one of the roses when
they are separated, but Michael Douglas is still in the
house and the Christmas tree catches fire and he runs
downstairs and puts it out and screams, thank god I
was here. And I say that a lot, and just
(11:57):
whenever anything dumb happens that I saw for the Face family,
I go, thank god I was here.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
That's great. That's a great thing. Man Chuck. Everybody loves
Chuck for reasons like that.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Not everybody, just like Raymond.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
All those people can go soak their heads.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Oh okay, thank you.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, since I think we're out of stuff to talk about,
short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and this is Short Stuff, The Mysteries of Genetic
Mutations Edition.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right, because we're gonna talk about the X Men.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, a mutation. I mean, I don't know if it
would help you join x men, But there are mutations
that alter people, sometimes in positive ways. We usually associated
with negative stuff, like a congenital disease or something. A
lot of them are neutral, I think actually the vast
majority are neutral. They don't really have any noticeable effect.
(00:38):
Some are beneficial. Lactose intolerance, immunity to malaria, when someone's
vestigial tale turns into a glorious full tale. Those are
all beneficial genetic mutations. But all of them share something
in common, and that is that the replication of the
person's genome had some sort of error while it was
(01:02):
being copied.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Is lactose intolerance a beneficial No lactose tolerance, I think
I thought you said intolerance.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, So lactose intolerance is apparently the
base line the default lactose tolerance is from a genetic mutation.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
All right, well, let's get into this. Let's talk about
DNA or deoxy riboonucleic acid as we all like to
call it, such a great word around the campfire. That's
a molecule that's going to carry genetic material almost said
mutation when you're developing as a as a future human.
And structurally, I think we've all seen the If you've
(01:43):
seen Jurassic Park, you've seen what these double this double
helix looks like it's a long molecule comprised of nucleotides
and there been you know, there's two strands to that
coil that formed the double helix that kind of wind
around each other. And that's that's what the DNA, the
(02:04):
full DNA what would you call it, just molecule looks.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Like the genome. Yeah, the molecule DNA is a molecule. Yeah,
and you said it man, it is long. Apparently if
you stretched it out, it would be about two meters
or six feet tall, if you could figure out how
to stretch it out. It's amazing. And it's made of
three point one billion base pairs of nucleotides, thymine, cytosine, guanine,
(02:28):
and adenine, and adenine goes with thymine, and cytosine goes
with guanine and you put all that together. Just with
those combinations, you have a a galaxy of different code
that's embedded into the DNA that serves as how like,
(02:50):
it tells the rest of your body, each cell what
it's supposed to do and how to do it. And
usually that has to do with expressing proteins.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, and you know, like you mentioned, as the cells
divide and the DNA is making copies of itself, there
might be errors here and there, and that's where those
mutations come from. And then if they're in the egg
and sperm cells, that those are going to be passed
on to the next generation. So that's a genetic mutation
that's going to carry on and cause disease or genetic disorders.
(03:20):
You can also have what's called a somatic mutation, and
that only affects you. It's not inherited by your future.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Kids, right exactly. So really the big problem is genes,
like a gene not being replicated correctly, and a gene
is just a stretch of nucleotide base pairs along your
genome that together shows how to encode a protein. It's
the instructions to how to do a specific thing. And
(03:48):
again it's just a segment along your DNA, and when
that stuff gets copied, if there's any kind of error,
like say you match up an AD nine to a cytosine,
it's going to prevent that cellular process that whatever the
gene is telling the cell to do to not be
able to be performed correctly, hence some mutation.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, and our cells are constantly copying themselves, either replacing
old cells or damage cells. And when that happens, when
they're doing that copy, that double stranded DNA is going
to split into the two parts and each strand is
copied on its own and then they come back together.
And when that happens, there can be errors. The good
news is it's approximately one in every one hundred million
(04:35):
replications this happens. So that's a you know, that's a
pretty good statistic to have in your hip pocket. The
other good news is DNA knows what it's doing, so
it generally knows when an error happens, and they try
to and often can repair and correct that before any
problems arise.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yes, I think that's a pretty good place to take
a break, Chuck. So let's take a break, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Shot shot.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Okay. So there's basically two ways that you can that
a genetic mutation can develop, the cell replication, which we've
talked a lot about, and then environmental influences. And there's
actually different ways that can happen. Even during cell replication.
There's tautumeric shifts, which is where the nucleotide itself undergoes
(05:47):
a quick chemical reaction to where suddenly adnine turns into
I don't know, silver just for a second and then
it eventually turns back. But if that if that adnine
nucleotide is being copied at that moment, you're going to
have a silver nucleotide in your DNA.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Silver just don't work when it comes to making proteins.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, so that's sort of due to bad timing. Another
thing that can happen as far as those errors go,
it's called mispairing. And was this a house Off Works article?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yes, it was.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, they did a pretty good job of putting this
in terms we could understand. If you imagine those two
DNA strands that work together are zipped together like a zipper.
Sometimes that zipper doesn't.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Align and get stuck in it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh my god, And that can happen when the DNA
is getting zipped back up, and that can cause parts
of it to be skipped over or maybe something added
that shouldn't be right.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And then the third way that a mutation can happen
during replication is what's called jumping genes cousins of jumping jacks,
and that is where so these genes are normally I
don't understand this fully, but gene which again are just
stretches of code on your DNA, can actually move. They
can change positions, they can change places. Sometimes they replicate themselves,
(07:08):
and the replicant goes and embeds itself in another segment
of your DNA, And if it does so in a
gene another gene, then it's going to mess up that
gene's ability to perform its function. Did not know that
that was a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Did not either, had never heard of jumping genes. I've
heard of jumping beans and jumping jacks, but never jumping genes.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Very nice. So that's the.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Ways that can happen. As far as like an error
occurring in your body on a cellular level, you mentioned
external factors. One of the big ones, and I didn't
know to this extent even is radiation and you might
be thinking like, yeah, so you just don't get X
rayed when you're pregnant, like that solves everything, right, That's
(07:55):
not necessarily a case, because UV radiation can be a
very big cause of mutations, specifically when it's called like
a sunburn on your DNA. If you have too much
UV radiation, you can they can form something called how
would you say.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That, I'm going to say perimidin dimers.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Perimeding dimers, And I looked, I was.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Like, is that a misprint? Is it supposed to be dimmers?
And Nope.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Now it's dimers and especially diming dimers that can distort
that DNA structure. And that's sort of like a sunburn
on the DNA, and that happens when a couple of
DNA building blocks are stuck together, and that's oftentimes caused
from you know, sun exposure.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, there's also chemical factors too, which are basically biological
or environmental factors. Essentially, what it is is there's different
kinds of chemicals that can make their way into the
DNA in the nucleus of a cell and just mess
with it. Sometimes they nucleotides and they get pulled in
(09:03):
like like just some guy walking down the street getting
pulled into the Jimmy Fallon Late Night Show because they
couldn't get enough people to fill seats. That can happen
during DNA reproduction replication, and when that nucleotide that didn't
mean to be there gets entered into that the new
code of DNA again, problems arise. That's a mutation.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
The problems arise when they have to sit there and
watch Jimmy Fallon. Oh man, boy, I'm gonna hear it.
They're also biological factors like a virus can cause that
can get in the DNA and that can lead to mutations.
And then there's some other environmental stuff as well, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
De animating agents they actually remove parts of our DNA.
Substances like stuff found in cigarette smoke can stick to
the DNA like so much tar and change the shape
of the DNA. Essentially, you don't want anything going anywhere
near your DNA. And if there's something that happens, and
it happens on an important gene, that mutation is going
(10:07):
to produce some sort of problems down the line. But
our body is actually really really good at either preventing
these errors or correcting them. When it finds them, which
is just mind boggling to me.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, it's super cool that our body can do this.
Sometimes it's like it's called a direct fix and these
are these are just small little errors. Like they likened
it to a road crack, and they also likened it
to just a quick patch on that road. The cell
just directly fixes it super quick.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Like yeah, and we should say the cell the Yeah,
the cell that's transcribing the DNA is aware of it
because there are different different molecules that proofread the newly
created DNA to make sure it matches the original.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, it is. So if they find a mismatch, if
they find just some stretch it could be big, small, whatever,
they'll actually cut it out excision. They'll digest it and
then they'll reproduce the correct version of it and then
connect it to that part that they cut out of
the DNA and then zip it together.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And if it's if a whole section of DNA gets damaged,
they can go to another DNA strand and say, hey,
I'm glad you're here because we're gonna use you now
to come fix this other strand.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, thank god you're here. They were about to pull
us into Jimmy Fallon and we needed something to do.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
That's a off said thing in my house. Thank God
I was here because I know we mentioned one of
the roses the movie How It Holds Up. That's one
of the great lines from one of the roses when
they are separated, but Michael Douglas is still in the
house and the Christmas tree catches fire and he runs
downstairs and puts it out and screams, thank god I
was here. And I say that a lot, and just
(11:57):
whenever anything dumb happens that I saw for the Face family,
I go, thank god I was here.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
That's great. That's a great thing. Man Chuck. Everybody loves
Chuck for reasons like that.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Not everybody, just like Raymond.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
All those people can go soak their heads.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Oh okay, thank you.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, since I think we're out of stuff to talk about,
short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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