Every time I type a text message on WhatsApp, I revise it to correct the typos. Sometimes the culprit is yours truly; mostly it is autocorrect, the know-all potential destroyer of relationships. As a rookie trainee in a bank, many decades ago, the accountant, a Gujarati gentleman, gave me a ledger and asked me to make a fresh one, copying all entries accurately. ‘Copy makkhi to makkhi,’ he said to me, smiling, peering over his spectacles. Er… what does this mean, I whispered to my fellow trainee who was Hindi-speaking. ‘Oh that,’ he grinned. ‘It means faithful copy, in slang. If you find a makkhi (fly) squashed to death on the page, replicate that as well!’ Looking at my expression of horror, he hastened to add, ‘Now, don’t take that literally!’
What happens in your body, when your DNA, while replicating itself, makes mistakes? Mutations are common when cells divide and proliferate. Most mutations are small, but some could be big. Typos in the brain! Sounds terrifying. Each time a cell divides, it has to copy the entire genome, 3.1 bn DNA base pairs, forming the code that makes proteins and cells that become part of your brain and other parts of your body. When the ovum and sperm merge to make a zygote, the journey of cell division begins and, along the way, we’re not sure if the copying mechanism is doing ‘makkhi to makkhi’ or not. That makes us all mutants, in a sense. No one is perfect.
