Mutagenesis is the process of inducing heritable changes in an organism's genome using physical or chemical mutagens. It was pioneered by Charlotte Auerbach, the first woman scientist to study the effects of chemical mutagens. There are several types of mutagenesis including directed, random, insertional, and PCR mutagenesis. Directed mutagenesis specifically changes DNA coding to alter amino acids, while random mutagenesis non-specifically changes codons to produce gene mutations. Mutagenesis has applications in studying protein function and can be used to induce traits like cytoplasmic male sterility in plants.