Describe the ways in which carbon is critical to life.

This is partially due to the ability of carbon to quickly form bonds with other atoms, giving stability to the form and role that biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA, can take, which are important for life's distinguishing features: development and reproduction.

Explanation:

genetic variation can be caused by mutation (which can create entirely new alleles in a population), random mating, random fertilization, and recombination between homologous chromosomes during meiosis (which reshuffles alleles within an organism's offspring).