Scientists Identify Fleeting Quantum Jitters that Drive Mutation Rate in DNA

Scientists in the U.S. have described how the DNA double helix contains an intrinsic timer that determines how often mutations might occur spontaneously. The team led by Ohio State University’s Zucai Suo, Ph.D., and Duke University’s Hashim M. Al-Hashimi, Ph.D., used a technique known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation dispersion to recognize how the bases in a double-stranded helix of DNA undergo fleeting changes in their shape—lasting just a thousandth of a second