A gene mutation is an alteration in the sequence of nucleotides in DNA that can affect a single nucleotide pair or larger gene segment. There are several types of gene mutations, including point mutations, which are the most common and involve a change in a single nucleotide base pair. Point mutations can be further categorized as silent, missense, or nonsense mutations depending on whether the mutation results in the same amino acid, a different amino acid, or a stop codon, respectively.