eli5 What would happen if our cells were unable to mutate?

Question

“Your body acquires trillions of mutations every day”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/your-body-acquires-trillions-of-new-mutations-every-day/559472/

And I understand why most of the time that’s fine.

But what would happen if your cells were unable to mutate?

In: 1

Answer 1

In the very long term, we’d be nothing but simple RNA-like chemicals copying each other in a warm chemical soup.

In the short term, everything would stop evolving at the instant that copying/reproduction became perfect. Pick a point, observe most of the higher animals become extinct as we regress to simple RNA-like chemicals copying each other in a warm chemical soup because nothing can adapt to changing conditions.