GCP Home Page

Mechanisms of generating genetic diversity

Remember that all of the organisms that exist today are the descendants, after many millions of years, of the ancestral life form. The huge amount of variation among present day organisms has arisen from changes in the DNA sequence over time (evolution).

There are many mechanisms for how this variation can be generated. Some of these are:

  • Point mutations
  • Insertions and deletions
  • Translocations
  • Transposon activity
  • Splicing, transcription and translation errors