With the power of modern genetics, scientists are developing ways of editing these genetic errors and reversing the course of many hard-to-treat diseases.
The accumulation of tiny genetic errors is thought to produce changes to the body as an animal grows old.
But genetic errors are inevitable and necessary for us to evolve".
All living things can mutate, but viruses are especially prone to these genetic errors.
Unlike many other viruses and organisms, the influenza virus does not correct genetic errors when it replicates, so it produces offspring that are not identical.
Another drug, which is already in early patient clinical studies and is made by AVI BioPharma, a company in Portland, Ore., is meant to skip over the genetic errors.
Working mostly with mice, researchers have already deployed the tool to correct the genetic errors responsible for sickle-cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, and the fundamental defect associated with cystic fibrosis.
This risk increases with the mother's age and, some studies suggest, with the father's age, because of genetic errors in the egg or sperm that result in embryos with too many or too few chromosomes.
The correction of genetic errors associated with disease in animals suggests that gene editing has potential applications in gene therapy for humans.
Cancers with defective DNA mismatch repair have the so-called mutator phenotype and accumulate genetic errors at an increased rate.
A study of genetic errors in types of mouse breast cells led by Cardiff University is bringing the prospect of personalised treatments for breast cancer closer, researchers say.
