A quark of one flavor can transform into a quark of another flavor only through the weak interaction, one of the four fundamental interactions in particle physics. By absorbing or emitting a W boson, any up-type quark (up, charm, and top quarks) can change into any down-type quark (down, strange, and bottom quarks) and vice versa.
This flavor transformation mechanism causes the radioactive process of beta decay, in which a neutron (n) "splits" into a proton (p), an electron (e−) and an electron antineutrino (νe). This occurs when one of the down quarks in the neutron (udd) decays into an up quark by emitting a virtual W− boson, transforming the neutron into a proton (uud). The W− boson then decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino.