Quotes About Mutation

The more cases of Ebola infection we have, the more chances there are for the virus to mutate in a particular way that adapts it well to living in humans, replicating in humans, and perhaps transmitting from human to human.

We don't know what we don't know about Ebola. We think we know it's a virus, but is it mutating? Can it be spread by airborne?

Professor Robinson was revealing, not creating, the anger. The fear. And yes, perhaps even the cowardice they kept hidden away. She was like some genetic mutation awakening illnesses that would have normally lain dormant.

Professor Robinson was revealing, not creating, the anger. The fear. And yes, perhaps even the cowardice they kept hidden away. She was like some genetic mutation awakening illnesses that would have normally lain dormant. She was the catalyst. But the potential, the sickness, was already there.

Evolution never looks to the future.

The study of evolution is an evolution in itself.

If there is one 'constant' in the structure and theme of the wonder tale, it is transformation.

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create... Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change [which] led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.

New mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.

Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.

All blue-eyed people are mutants. The first ones appeared as recently as 5,000 years ago.

All influenza viruses mutate constantly

virus has only one function: to replicate itself.

Speculative explanations of that phenomenon come down to the fact that the virus mutates rapidly, which explains why a mantra at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is "When you've seen one influenza season, you've seen one influenza season.

San Antonio suffered one of the highest attack rates but lowest death rates in the country; the virus there infected 53.5 percent of the population, and 98 percent of all homes in the city had at least one person sick with influenza. But there the virus had mutated toward mildness; only 0.8 percent of those who got influenza died. (This death rate was still double that of normal influenza.)

Reassortment mixes some of the segments of the genes of one virus with some from the other. It is like shuffling two different decks of cards together, then making up a new deck with cards from each one. This creates an entirely new hybrid virus, which increases the chances of a virus jumping from one species to another.

For the virus had not disappeared. It had only gone underground, like a forest fire left burning in the roots, swarming and mutating, adapting, honing itself, watching and waiting, waiting to burst into flame.

But the virus can adapt to man. It can do so directly, with an entire animal virus jumping to humans and adapting with a simple mutation. It can also happen indirectly. For one final and unusual attribute of the influenza virus makes it particularly adept at moving from species to species.

Public health experts monitor this drift and each year adjust the flu vaccine to try to keep pace. But they will never be able to match up perfectly, because even if they predict the direction of mutation, the fact that influenza viruses exist as mutating swarms means some will always be different enough to evade both the vaccine and the immune system.

pace of genetic selection, recombination

That's nuts," Niamh said. "That's evolution

If then this tendency toward collectivization is a mutation there is no reason to suppose it is for the better. It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction.

The problem with the Gene pool is there arn't any lifeguards.