Exacerbation of retinal degeneration by light-exposure has been observed for rhodopsin mutants that may or may not initiate a cell death cascade that involves phototransduction.
A viral quasispecies emerges within the infected host that is composed of a spectrum of mutants that may include biological variants such as immunologic escape mutants, faster and slower growing viruses, defective viruses, and drug resistant and sensitive viruses [4] [7].
The 2000 cichlid species in these lakes represent a collection of natural mutants that may provide insight into the genetic mechanisms of speciation and adaptation [ 7].
Systematic mutagenesis is thus an effective strategy for isolating transporter mutants that may be conformationally constrained and which represent attractive targets for crystallisation and structure determination.
This possibility highlights an outstanding unresolved issue in experimental evolution, namely the extent to which adaptation results from accumulation of de novo mutations as opposed to selection of rare adaptive mutants that may exist at the onset of selection.
These confidence scores were used to predict the likely viability of various NS5 mutants that may be observed and from which we chose the mutations we introduced into the NS5 gene of the FLIC.
