Quotes About Genes

Our genes make us immortal.

You could double the number of synaptic connections in a very simple neurocircuit as a result of experience and learning. The reason for that was that long-term memory alters the expression of genes in nerve cells, which is the cause of the growth of new synaptic connections.

The genetic you and the neural you aren't alternatives to the conscious you. They are its foundations.

Of course it is a very simple matter to identify genes which might modify intelligence or memory and start thinking about whether you want to enhance a human, and the next generation is going to have to deal with that issue. Should we be trying to enhance humans rather than trying to educate them and so on?

Well, biology is not only about genes and environment, but also cells and the constraints of their physical structure, which we shall see have little to do with either genes or environment directly. The predictions that arise from these disparate world views are strikingly different.

Mitochondria, as we have seen, are only passed on in the egg, so all 13 mitochondrial genes come from our mothers. If these genes really do influence lifespan, and we can only inherit them from our mothers, then our own lifespan should reflect that of our mothers but not our fathers.

Timmis and colleagues found that chloroplast genes are transferred to the nucleus at a rate of about 1 transfer in every 16 000 seeds in the tobacco plant Nicotiana tabacum. This may not sound impressive, but a single tobacco plant produces as many as a million seeds in a single year, which adds up to more than 60 seeds in which at least one chloroplast gene has been transferred to the nucleus—in every plant, in every generation.

Core metabolism has changed little in part because it was never powered down in its four-billion-year history. The genes are custodians of this flame, but without the flame life is – dead.

Onions, wheat and amoebae have more genes and more DNA than we do. Amphibians such as frogs and salamanders have genome sizes that range over two orders of magnitude, with some salamander genomes being 40 times larger than our own, and some frogs being less than a third of our size. If

Mitochondrial genes act like a female surname, which enables us to trace our ancestry down the female line in the way some families try to trace their descent down the male line from William the Conqueror, or Noah, or Mohammed.

Storing genes, vulnerable informational systems, in the immediate vicinity of the mitochondrial respiratory chains, which leak destructive free radicals, is equivalent to storing a valuable library in the wooden shack of a registered pyromaniac.

Was it genes or magick? she wondered. But then, for some, one was the same as the other

Ty, have you ever considered how lucky we are, you and I, that certain genes skipped a generation? Don't close off, she said before he could draw away. You're so like Eli. She combed her fingers through his hair. She'd come to love the way she could tease out the reds. Tough guy, she said as she touched her lips to his cheek. Solid as a rock. Don't let the weak space between you and Eli cut at you.

Our children are not ours because we have given them our genes. They are ours because we have had the audacity to envision them.

How could someone possibly be that beautiful? She wondered for the hundred thousandth time. What higher power orchestrated such a perfect union of genes? Who decided that one single solitary soul deserved skin like that? It was so fundamentally unfair.(Chasing Harry Winston)

If by 'miracle kids' you mean innocent test-tube babies whose DNA was forcibly unraveled and merged with two percent avian genes, yeah, I guess that would be us, I said. Because it's a miracle that we're not complete nut jobs and mutant disasters.

There are no genes or areas in the brain devoted uniquely to reading. Rather, our ability to read represents our brain's protean capacity to learn something outside our repertoire by creating new circuits that connect existing circuits in a different way.

Perhaps genes did regulate the aging process. Perhaps different organisms had different life spans because a universal regulatory 'clock' was set to run at different speeds in different species.

We have 100 genes or so, which we know we can't knock out without killing the cell, that are of unknown structure.

We will create life from inanimate compounds, and we will find life in space. But the life that should more immediately interest us lies between these extremes, in the middle range we all inhabit between our genes and our stars.

Cancer is really a DNA disease... We have these certain genes that prevent our cells from growing out of control at the expense of the body. And it's a pretty good, robust system. But if a couple of these genes fail, then that's when cancer starts, and cells start growing out of control.

might have not only more energy, but also lower odds of developing obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, brain disease, and prostate, breast, and colon cancers. Their genes are going to "look" younger; even their poop and the bacteria in their poop are more aligned with good health.

Psychiatrists look for twisted molecules and defective genes as the causes of schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is the name of a disease. If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic "causes" of these "conditions"?

In my family no-one did high level sports at all.