Quotes About Cells

If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.

In my lab, we're finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres.

Your cells are not working as hard as your dog's but harder than your horse's. The bigger the animal, the less energy needed to sustain a gram of tissue.

Cancer is a sneaky animal. It starts right in the middle of normal cells so that our immune system does not recognize it and destroy it

Stem cells are like toenail clippings with a better career plan.

The same make of organelles functions in the cells of mice and men; the same make of contractile protein serves the motion of amoeba and of the pianist's fingers; the same four chemical units constitute the alphabet of heredity throughout the animal and plant kingdoms-only the words are different for every creature.

At each step biochemical triggers and feedbacks determine which of the alternative developmental pathways among several possibles a group of cells will actually follow.

Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone.

all perception is but a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions on the surface of the brain cells.

The human mind ... operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.

by the time your offspring have reached four and five it is far too late to be looking for schools: demand for private education is so high that children must be put down for admission not at birth but in utero, ideally before their first cells have divided.

Life is a hierarchy of nested levels, like Russian dolls: genes within chromosomes within cells within individual organisms within hives, societies, and other groups.

The discovery by Hubel and Wiesel of cells that respond to linear stimuli with specific axes of orientation may partly explain our response to Mondrian's work, but it does not explain the artist's focus on horizontal and vertical lines to the exclusion of oblique lines. Vertical

It's hard for most of us to accept that we are nine parts microbe and only one part human, at least as far as a count of our cells goes.

Memory is stored in neurons—interactive memory, carried in charge and potential, then downloaded to chemical storage in cells, then downloaded to molecular level. Stored in introns of individual cells.

Is it absurd to imagine that our social behavior, from amoeba to man, is also planned and dictated, from stored information, by the cells? And that the time has come for men to be entrusted with the task, through heroic efforts, of bringing life to other worlds?

Able Danger was a top-secret military planning operation, established in '99 by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to identify cells of al-Qaida worldwide and to take out al Qaida terrorists. They identified five cells worldwide, one of them in Brooklyn.

For a decade, I had been studying a transparent worm, the C. elegans. I immediately thought, if you could put the G.F.P. gene into C. elegans, you'd then be able to see biological processes in live animals. Until then, we had to kill them and prepare their tissues chemically to visualize proteins or active genes within cells.

It is unlikely that changes in telomeres are influencing the lifespan of the worm. That is because telomeres only shorten when cells divide. Most of the cells of the worm stop dividing when the worm becomes an adult.

The number of cells in our bodies is defined by an equilibrium of opposing forces: mitosis adds cells, while programmed cell death removes them. Just as too much cell division can lead to a pathological increase in cell number, so can too little cell death.

IPS cells can become a powerful tool to develop new drugs to cure intractable diseases because they can be made from patients' somatic cells.

We have 26,000 genes. But a blind, millimetre-long roundworm with only 959 cells in total already has over 19,000.

I think, therefore a single fertilized egg cell can replicate itself into trillions of specialized and exquisitely organized cells.

Hunger cannot be ignored. Hunger signals you to take what you need. Hunger makes you reach out your hand. Your brain, your stomach, your cells hunger. They break down matter and transform it into something else, the gestalt of your life. You cannot live without hunger. You cannot live with hunger. Hunger begins your exchange with the world.