mutate

When hypergolic propellants burn, they release highly carcinogenic toxins and can cause suffocation and mutate a person’s DNA.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026

Genes can be expressed or activated, or not—more often they’re not; they mutate and can alter their own function and be altered by environmental forces.

From Slate ● Mar. 19, 2026

Most efforts to create broader vaccines have aimed to protect against an entire viral family, such as all coronaviruses or all influenza strains, by targeting viral components that mutate less frequently.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 23, 2026

The concern for public health experts has been that, as the virus passes between animals, it could mutate in a way that would allow it to move easily from human to human.

From Barron's ● Oct. 28, 2025

It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger.

From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“It’s a virus that mutates and against which people must be immunized over and over again.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026

Bird flu has already cost America billions — and if it mutates to allow for human-to-human transmission, the cost could soar into the hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.

From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2025

The COVID-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, mutates often, learning to better transmit itself from person to person and evade immunity created by vaccinations and previous infections.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2025

If that protein in the coronavirus changes or mutates then the body's protection is lessened.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2025

“You are absolutely right. This hummer has an established life cycle. You get into that what-if? game. What if it got into human lungs? If it mutates, it could be a problem. A big problem.”

From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston

When arginine is scarce, cells struggle to produce MHC-1, a protein that helps alert the immune system to threats such as mutated cells and invading viruses.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 3, 2026

But despite its effectiveness in eliminating polio, the live virus occasionally mutated back into its pathogenic form, resulting in rare cases of vaccine-related polio—something that Sabin refused to acknowledge.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026

But the alternative, as “Backrooms” so sagely implies, is remaining stuck in the past, letting ourselves be mutated and misremembered until we look nothing like us at all.

From Salon ● May 30, 2026

A highly mutated COVID-19 strain is circulating in California — raising concerns that disease activity could rise heading into the summer.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2026

Without their knowing, my grandparents, on their way to America, were each carrying a single mutated gene on the fifth chromosome.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

Successive governments have attempted to ban such groups, yet the problem has persisted with gangs mutating, rebranding and reappearing under new names each electoral cycle.

From BBC ● May 3, 2026

Stillness that is not still—think Martha Graham by way of Irving Penn, with a nod to Rei Kawakubo’s mutating forms.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2025

Nearby, Yang Bao’s “Hyperspace,” a gold, mirrored pyramid accompanied by gleaming shards, nestled in a former lavender field, shimmers amid thyme, gingko, California poppies and native grasses, accompanied by haunting, and constantly mutating, music.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2025

If there's one thing viruses are good at, it's mutating into new forms that can evade our immunity, whether that's from vaccines or past infections.

From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2025

Ernie glared back in the mirror, picking at his face, a big pimple in the middle of his forehead like he was mutating into a unicorn.

From "As Brave As You" by Jason Reynolds