Quotes About Mutation

A thoroughly loving person is like an evolutionary mutation, manifesting

According to the laws of evolution, a species develops in a certain direction until that development is no longer well adapted for survival. At that point, a mutation occurs. Although the mutation doesn't represent the majority of the species, it represents the line of evolution better adapted for the species' survival. The descendants of the mutation are then the ones to survive.

His (Paul's) entire personality within mutation. He was being turned inside out as he led Jesus light the recesses of his soul.

We are sometimes asked what the result would be if we put four +'s in one gene. To answer this my colleagues have recently put together not merely four but six +'s.

With evolution, things are always changing, so I sort of think: Should we all be growing three heads?

This is the vowel of earth dreaming its root in flowers and snow, mutation of weathers and seasons, a windfall composing the floor it rots into. I grew out of all this like a weeping willow inclined to the appetites of gravity.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

Helen Spurway concluded from the evidence of homology that the organism has only 'a restricted mutation spectrum' which 'determines its possibilities of evolution'.

Since we cannot in the foreseeable future expect the necessary change in human nature to arise by way of a spontaneous mutation, that is, by natural means, we must induce it by artificial means. We can only hope to survive as a species by developing techniques which supplant biological evolution. We must search for a cure for the schizophysiology inherent in man's nature, and the resulting split in our minds, which led to the situation in which we find ourselves.

Now microbes seem to have an enormous mutation rate (or some other method of hereditary adaptation), for, within a few years, they have evolved new drug-resistant strains. We humans cannot perform such evolutionary feats. But we can simulate major adaptive mutations by adding iodine to the drinking water, or by putting drops into the eyes of the newborn, to protect them from enemies against which our natural defences are inadequate.

Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel.

it was known that genes could be faithfully transmitted with mutation rates (errors) of less than one in one billion. This extraordinary high degree of fidelity convinced Schrödinger that the laws of heredity could not be founded on the "order from disorder" classical laws. Instead, he proposed that genes were more like individual atoms or molecules in being subject to the nonclassical but strangely orderly rules of the science he helped to found, quantum mechanics.

Cultural change works orders of magnitude faster then genetic change. Stephen Jay Gould

Furthermore, a cell has no ability to improve its basic function. Bacteria that becomes resistant to antibiotics are still bacteria. Fruit flies that develop mutations are still fruit flies. Moths that change color are still moths. Birds that develop longer and shorter beaks are still birds. Therefore, one organism has no natural ability to change into another organism. (chapter 10)

Whatever was in the sandwiches, you didn't want them getting too warm and going off, or starting to smell, or spontaneously mutating into a new life form.

they now occurred in different forms.

My fashion icons change regularly.

If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

With worms you can just change genes at random and see if you can find a mutant that does what you want it to do.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

Every batch of sperm represents an opportunity for genetic typos - called de novo mutations - to be passed on. A 20-year-old man and woman will each pass on about 20 de novo mutations to a baby they conceive. By the time the couple is 40, a woman's total has remained at 20, while a man's has jumped to 65 - and it keeps climbing from there.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

Her greatest wish I should think was that I would remain exactly as I was, and how I regret that that was not to be. It was only for her roses that she wished for change, the strange moment of loral enchantment when the branch of a rose mutates, and shows a "sport," something new arising from the known rose. A leap in beauty.

French researchers led by Ivan Matic, of the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, studied hundreds of bacteria from all over the world and found that they also went into hyperdrive, mutationally speaking, when put under stress. Although the evidence is mounting, the case of hypermutation is definitely still pending.