• Question: What would happen if there was one missing piece of DNA

    Asked by Ktrose384 to Richard on 18 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Richard Unwin

      Richard Unwin answered on 18 Nov 2015:

      Hi Ktrose,

      That’s a good question, and the answer depends on which bit was missing, and how big it is. Some bits of DNA are critical – if they suddenly went missing we could get a disease or even die (a good example here is people with inherited disabilities or who are predisposed to get cancer at a young age). However, there are other bits of DNA that either don’t seem to do much, or that we don’t use any more, and we probably could lose and it not make any difference.

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