Quotes About Genes

My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.

Life evolves. Parasites evolve. Sex evolves to counter the parasites. Shuffles the genes so the parasites have to shoot for a moving target. Everything else—species diversity, density-dependence, everything—it all follows from those three laws. You get a self-replicating string past a certain threshold, it's like a nuclear reaction.

protocadherin

MY GENES DONE GONE AND TRICKED MY BRAIN BY MAKING FUCKING FEEL SO GREAT THAT'S HOW THE LITTLE CREEPS ATTAIN THEIR PLAN TO FUCKIN' REPLICATE BUT BRAIN'S GOT TRICKS ITSELF, YOU SEE TO GET THE BANG BUT NOT THE BITE I GOT THIS HERE VASECTOMY MY GENES CAN FUCK THEMSELVES TONIGHT. —The R-Selectors, "Trunclade

My genes done gone and tricked my brain By making fucking feel so great That's how the little creeps attain Their plan to fuckin' replicate But brain's got tricks itself, you see To get the bang but not the bite I got this here vasectomy My genes can fuck themselves tonight. - The R-Selectors, Trunclade

Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart.

Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer.

It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer.

The passengers in our microbiome contain at least four million genes, and they work constantly on our behalf: they manufacture vitamins and patrol our guts to prevent infections; they help to form and bolster our immune systems, and digest food.

I have Scottish genes: my grandfather was Scottish. My father was a voracious drinker. So, drinking came naturally to me.

Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.

The accrued guilt and clutter of day-to-day existence—the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the festering familial sores, the inescapable prison of your genes—all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose, and by the seriousness of the task at hand.

The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence—the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes—all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness

He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others.

He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others.

There are no spaces in genes, but cells still understand the three-letter structure. De novo genes arise when a clump of letters is converted into a meaningful sentence by chance, and thus suddenly becomes understandable by the mechanics of the cell, and translated into a protein. The protein that results is utilised in some way. If it is used, then the organism that has acquired this new gene will pass it on.

But we don't have more protein-coding genes than a chimpanzee. In fact, we have fewer genes than a roundworm. Or a banana.

The pressures of natural selection have undoubtedly changed as a result of the evolution of our behavior and culture, but milk shows that, just as in every organism that has ever lived, over time our genes continue to change.

The second point is that the world in which we live is shaped by us, by our practices and culture, by our very existence, and our DNA responds to that in turn. Genes change culture, culture changes genes.

This is a seam that will run throughout this book, confronting and dispelling the culturally ubiquitous idea that genes are fate, and a certain type of any one gene will determine exactly what an individual is like. That this is a fallacy is universally known among geneticists, yet it is still an idea that carries a lot of cultural significance, fueled frequently by the media and an ultra-simplistic understanding of the absurd complexities of human biology.

These gene maps powerfully suggest that that the Beringian Standstill hypothesis is correct: All Native Americans, north and south, have versions of genes relating to diet that are suited to their current environments, but born of an ancient population subject to local adaptation in the frozen north, thousands of years ago.

Genes never work in isolation, and almost never have just one role.

extremely complicated. But they are recorded in our genes. The aim of this book is to anatomize and lay out precisely what our DNA can and can't tell us about the concept of race.

Genes are the units of inheritance, the things that are selected by nature to be carried into the future. Nature sees the physical manifestation of a gene—the phenotype—and as a result of that trait enhancing survival, the DNA underwriting it succeeds, and is passed on down the generations. Genes are the templates on which our lives are built.