Evolution: Mutation, Natural Selection, Genetic Drift and Gene Flow

What is evolution and how does it work? Evolution is the theory of how one form of life changes into another form. Evolution also is the change of a population’s inherited traits from generation to generation. Evolution helps to explain why an animal, human, and plant looks the way it does and acts the way it does; it gives an explanation of the history of life. Genes come in many varieties and the evolution helps to make it happen. Mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow: the four forces that make the evolution work.

Mutation happens when the DNA gene gets changed, moves, or is damaged. When this happens it causes the genetic message to be carried by that gene to be different. This process can occur in somatic cells. The somatic cells are all the cells that are a living organism except the reproductive cells, meaning the body. For example, the skin cells on your legs are and will not be passed on to ones offsprings. In addition those leg cells will not effect the evolution. Another occurrence is called gametic mutations, which is in a woman's eggs and or in a man's sperm. These are cells that are and can be passed on to ones offsprings, and they are the essentials for the evolution. There are three effects mutation causes to a species. Species can only takes on one of the three. The three effects are bad, neutral, and good. Having a bad mutation can cause one to have a harder time being able to survive. Having a neutral mutation will not change or help one to survive. Having a good mutation will help one to survive and have a better chance of survival. However, mutation is random in the evolution, and provides raw material for natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow...

... middle of paper ...

...he genetic differences making more of a variation but it does this process slowly.

Evolution is a on going process and the evolution is made up of many different processes. It allows species to become what they are, how they act, and what they will become. It also allows species to be able to survive. It produces new and different species through ancestral populations of organisms and moves them to new population. Both natural selection and genetic drift decrease genetic variation. If they were the only mechanisms of evolution, populations would eventually become homogeneous and further evolution would be impossible. There are, however, mechanisms that replace variation depleted by selection and drift (Colby).

Work Cited

Colby, Chris. "An Introduction to Evolutionary Biology" Web. 28 August 2015.

http://www.skepticfiles.org/evolut/evolutfa.htm