Question

How are mutations important to evolution?

Answer 1

A variation in the sequence of the DNA of an organism is a mutation. Mutations can be triggered in the atmosphere by high-energy sources such as sunlight or by chemicals. During the replication of DNA, they may also randomly occur.

Complete answer:
-For evolution, mutations are important. Initially, a genetic trait of every organism was the product of a mutation. The new genetic variant (allele) spreads through reproduction, and a distinguishing feature of evolution is differential reproduction. It is easy to see how a mutation that helps an organism to feed, expand or replicate more efficiently may contribute over time to a greater abundance of the mutant allele.
-The population could soon be very different ecologically and/or physiologically from the initial population that lacked change. Also deleterious mutations, particularly in small populations, may cause evolutionary change by replacing individuals that may bear adaptive alleles in other genes.
-At single points in a genome, most mutations occur, likely modifying a single protein, and hence could appear unimportant. For eg, in your (and all other vertebrate) salivary glands, genes regulate the function and efficacy of digestive enzymes. At first sight, it can seem that mutations in salivary enzymes have no ability to affect survival. However it is exactly the aggregation of minor salivary mutations that is responsible for snake venom and therefore much of the evolution of the snake.
-Although the history of many animals has been influenced by the slow accumulation of small-point mutations, evolution often operates much quicker. Several kinds of species had an ancestor that refused to properly undergo meiosis before sexual reproduction, resulting in a complete replication of each pair of chromosomes. In the grey treefrog of North America, such a process produced an "instant speciation" event.
-The effect of doubling the size of the genome of plants is always abnormally big seeds or fruits, a feature that can be of distinct benefit if you are a flowering plant! Compared to other grasses, most cereals that humans consume have large seeds, and this is mostly attributed to genetic duplications that existed in the ancestors of modern rice and wheat and were successfully passed on to subsequent generations since the error occurred in reproductive organs.
-By interbreeding individual plants with the largest fruits and seeds in the process of artificial selection, humans themselves have mimicked this process, producing many of our current agricultural crop strains. The principle of evolution by natural selection, first defined by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, involves differential survival due to greater evolutionary fitness for certain humans. If genetic defects, venomous saliva or expanded offspring impair this health, heritable variance may only occur through mutation. Without a spontaneous genetic alteration to the raw material, adaptation is certainly not probable.

Note: A variety of results can be had by mutations. Sometimes they can be dangerous. Others have little to no harmful effects. And occasionally, but very rarely, it can also turn out that the shift in the DNA sequence is advantageous for the organism.