🧬 Changed organism 🧬 Changed by mutation 💻 Changed software

mutant

14 7.9

A changed program made by small code edits to check how good tests are

noun
/ˈmjuːtənt/

Jargon

: mutante

Teenage mutant
Mutant Ninja
Mutant Ninja Turtles

Examples

PHOTO (COLOR): The discoverer: Technician William Brown, who spotted mutant corn plants with the glossy-15 gene in a research field, looks here for evidence of other jumping gene mutations.

Academic text (1994)
His idea in studying the mutant is to learn how to get more iron or other minerals into the edible portion—the seed—and not just in peas.

Academic text (1994)
In software testing, a mutant is created by making small changes to the code to evaluate the effectiveness of tests.
The development team analyzed various mutant versions of the application to determine which bugs were detected.
Each mutant version of the software helps identify weaknesses in the existing tests during the quality assurance process.

Compounds

mutant gene

Specialized

1 5.8

A gene that has changed and makes a feature appear or work differently

Surface Forms

mutant singular

mutants plural

Morphology

mutant = mutate (transparent) = mutate + ant

In computing 'mutant' means a deliberately changed version of code; this sense is a direct application of 'mutate' + '-ant'.

Etymology

Mutant comes from the Latin mutare, meaning 'to change', just like in mutate and mutation. In computing, a mutant is a program that has been slightly changed on purpose to test the software, so the name fits because it is a 'changed' version of the original program.