The Atacama Desert, a 1000km stretch of parched wasteland, separates it from Peru to the north. And to the west, only a few islands dotted in the Pacific Ocean break the waves that roll onto Chileâs coast from Australasia.
What is a mutation? A mutation is a change that occurs in our DNA sequence, either due to mistakes when the DNA is copied or as the result of environmental factors such as UV light and cigarette smoke.
A mutation is a genetic change that causes new and different characteristics, like the mutation on the dog's DNA that makes its tail shorter than its ancestors' tails. Mutation comes from the Latin word mutationem meaning a changing.. You might recognize this root in related words like mutate, mutable, and mutant. We often think of mutations as changes in an animal's genetic structure, but there are other kinds of mutations.