Abstract: One of the fundamental questions in biological sciences and key problem to be solved in evolutionary biology is that how intra- and interspecific genomic diversity formed, accumulated and preserved in the long history of evolution. It is well known that mutation is the major driving force that has shaped genomes. Moreover mutation research forms the basis for the study of genome evolution. So a full understanding of mutation is necessary to unravel the mechanisms of genome evolution. In the review, we summarize the progress of mutation research and latest development in this field with an emphasis on the property of mutation and its profound significance toward genomic evolution.

Key words: nucleotide substitution, insertion and deletion, genome, evolution