04074 IUPAC Gold Book - mutation 10.1351/goldbook.M04074 M04074 current 1 A heritable change in the nucleotide sequence of genomic DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses), or in the number of genes or chromosomes in a cell, which may occur spontaneously or be brought about by chemical mutagens or by radiation (induced mutation). DNA https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/D01597 RNA https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/R05386 chromosomes https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C01077 genes https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/G02604 nucleotide https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/N04255 sequence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/ST06775 PAC, 1992, 64, 143. 'Glossary for chemists of terms used in biotechnology (IUPAC Recommendations 1992)' on page 161 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199264010143) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M04074/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M04074/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M04074/plain Citation: 'mutation' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.M04074 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-01T02:35:20+00:00