Whether a beneficial mutation occurs or not is a matter of chance. Although you may think mutations are rare, it depends on the scale and the organism

Whether a beneficial mutation occurs or not is a matter of chance. Although you may think mutations are rare, it depends on the scale and the organism. The mutation is rare for any individual nucleotide. However, at the level of the whole organism, the rate of mutation depends on the size of the genome and the number of cell divisions per generation of the organism. Use the dropdown menus in the table below to summarize the information in Figure 14.5 on page 305 of your textbook. Rate of mutation per Organism Genome size nucleotide per replication Rate of mutation per round genome per generation RNA viruses, retroviruses