Spontaneous mutations tend to reduce fitness in populations of living organisms, but this erosion of fitness is countered by natural selection. This study uses the first mutation accumulation ...

A person may inherit the genetic changes responsible for muscular dystrophy. These genetic changes can also occur due to spontaneous genetic mutations. In either case, the disease is not preventable.

Childhood cancers are often considered genetically simple, containing few mutations. However, this notion has been challenged in a new study that found an unexpectedly high number of mutations in a ...