Quotes About Mutation

Among the genetic gifts the Neanderthals passed on to us, it seems, is red hair, bless them.

Things change, but only into themselves. Downstairs

For my part, I wonder whether someday I will ever succeed in making it felt that the true character and the only one that interests me is the reader, to the degree in which something of what I write ought to contribute to his mutation, displacement, alienation, transportation." In spite of the tacit confession of defeat in the last sentence, Ronald found a presumption in the note that displeased him. (–18)

A few small changes in your DNA can turn your eyes blue, make you lactose intolerant or put some curl in your hair.

In the comic-book lore, of course, you mutate post a traumatic event. You must have the mutant gene, but if something traumatic happens to you, usually at puberty, then that mutation manifests itself.

The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes.

Yet we would not expect the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations to produce the top-down pattern that we observe in the history of life following the Cambrian explosion.

There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows."19

if God did not at least direct the process of mutation and selection (and/or other relevant evolutionary mechanisms), but instead merely sustained the laws of nature that made them possible, then it follows that he could not know and does not know, what those mechanisms would (or will) produce, including whether they would have produced human beings.

All this notwithstanding, I have long been aware of strong reasons for doubting that mutation and selection can add enough new information of the right kind to account for large-scale, or "macroevolutionary," innovations—the various information revolutions that have occurred after the origin of life.

requires the creation of entirely new information. As an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have noted, natural selection explains "only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.

Gills would evolve into

Evolution is no more than the perpetuation of error.

In the past, geneticists have looked at so-called disease genes, but a lot of people have changes in their genes and don't get these diseases. There have to be other parts of physiology and genetics that compensate.

Among the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things ... only one, which began a century and a half ago ... has allowed the figure of man to appear.

Mais surtout, alors qu'en 1955 Foucault confrontait finalement des « expériences de pensée », en 1966-1968 la terminologie sera celle des « discours » : ce sont les « mutations du discours philosophique » qui seront étudiées.

Faced with these mutations, we no doubt need to be invent-ing unimaginable novelties, far outside the obsolete frameworks that still format our behaviors, our medias, and our projects—all of which are being drowned in the society of the spectacle.

For example, you might have a sever sunburn as a child. Many decades later, you might develop skin cancer at that same site. This means it probably took that long for the other mutation to occur and finally tip the cell into a cancerous mode.

Many people ask the simple question, "Why can't we cure the common cold?" Actually, we can. But since there are over 300 rhinoviruses that can cause colds, and since they constantly mutate, it makes no sense to develop 300 vaccines to hit this moving target. We simply live with it.

But if humans can make new varieties of plants and animals, must not nature do so also? This related process is called natural selection. That life has changed fundamentally over the aeons is entirely clear from the alterations we have made in the beasts and vegetables during the short tenure of humans on Earth, and from the fossil evidence.

I'm not keen on interfering with nature; I don't want to edit my genome.

Lost their stomachs, sealed up their anuses and adopted the autotroph way

The combined effects of mutation, natural selection and the random process of genetic drift cause changes in the composition of a population. Over a sufficiently long period of time, these cumulative effects alter the population's genetic make-up, and can thus greatly change the species' characteristics from those of its ancestors.

The combined effects of mutation, natural selection and the random process of genetic drift cause changes in the composition of a population. Over a sufficiently long period of time, these cumulative effects alter the population's genetic make-up, and can thus greatly change the species' characteristics from those of its ancestors. We