Quotes About Mutation

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

There is nothing in England more constant than the inconstancy of dress.

It is now known that the basic mutation rate in DNA is 0.71 per cent per million years. Working back from the present difference between chimpanzee and human DNA, we arrive at a figure of 6.6 million years ago for the chimpanzee–human divergence.5

Cancer... the process of creation gone wild, I thought.

They were a form of mutated twinning, joined at the base of the skull so that a single cephalic structure served both separate bodies. Evidently the personality George inhabited one hemisphere of the brain, made use of one eye: the right, as he recalled. And the personality Walt existed on the other side, distinct with its own idiosyncrasies, views and drives—and its own eye from which to view the outside universe.

nothing ever vanished, not totally. Instead, things altered shape, substance, meaning.

The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.

You can never tell how genes ricochet.

If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes.

The mutated Marfan gene creates a defective version of fibrillin, a protein that provides structural support for soft tissues like blood vessels. Marfan victims often die young, in fact, after their aortas grow threadbare and rupture.

The facts appear to be mutating every forty minutes. Like bacteria.

Aeons change, not as the result of some war in heaven or astrological event. Rather they are simply the consequence of some improved modification in human consciousness. Obviously, such a mutation needs to be universal and fundamental: something most of us share with our fellows, something as simple as how we perceive our relationship with the Sun.

But time brings odd mutations, and there we were.

Evil never dies. It just changes faces.

Other mysteries have been untangled. Redheads are known to feel pain especially acutely. This confused researchers until someone realized that the same genetic mutation that causes red hair also increases sensitivity to pain. One study found that redheaded patients require about 20 percent more general anesthesia than brunettes.

Nothing is lost ... only changed.

Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed.

nanogenetic

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

Yes. You see, it's not 1 of those germs that break bleed suck gnaw or devour. It's nothing we can bring into focus or categorize; once we call it 1 thing it forms into something else.

There must be fidelity to a goal and purity of heart, values fundamental to salvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a sign of grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of a frog; and above all, there must be present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: men, beasts, plants, things.

But at other moments, it exploded. Species experienced long periods of stasis that were interrupted by sudden bursts of change. Afterward, the newly transformed species remained stable for another long stretch—until another eruption abruptly altered its course once again.

My ideal audience is on the young side, eager to mutate and move to a higher level of consciousness. I want my images to turn the viewer's brain into what it is: a flying carpet.

I'm not going to play my violin, but with my dwarfism, I'm a bit of a mutant.