Quotes About Genes

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.

But unlike other life forms (if a virus is considered a life form), a virus does not even do that itself. It invades cells that have energy and then, like some alien puppet master, it subverts them, takes them over, forces them to make thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, of new viruses. The power to do this lies in their genes. •

If the Hong Kong chicken influenza had infected someone who was simultaneously infected with a human influenza virus, the two viruses might easily have reassorted their genes. They might have formed a new virus that could pass easily from person to person. And the lethal virus might have adapted to humans.

Natural selection is intolerant of idle verbosity.

Early experience shapes the structure and function of the brain. This reveals the fundamental way in which gene expression is determined by experience.

Every minute, every second, the pattern of genes being expressed in your brain changes, often in direct or indirect response to events outside the body. Genes are the mechanisms of experience.

A few people -and a few chimpanzees- are just frankly antisocial. Presumably, such cases are the result of something going grievously wrong in a brain that has been built by a particular combination of genes and then submitted to a particular set of environmental pressures, so that it places almost everyone in an outgroup. When such individuals act alone, they are antisocial. But when they gain control over groups or even whole nations, they join the ranks of history's greatest villains.

killing other members of our own species -a rarity in the animal kingdom- is a male behavior that evolved early in our history, because those individuals who manifested such a predisposition were more likely to transmit their genes to the next generation than those who didn't. War and violence, then, are indelibly linked to sex and reproduction.

After a certain age, and even if we develop in quite different ways, the more we become ourselves, the more our family traits are accentuated.

Where there is little danger, there seems to be little stimulation. Perhaps the pattern of struggle is so deeply imprinted in the genes of all life conceived in this benevolently hostile planet that the removal of obstacles automatically atrophies a survival drive.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

I hate to be fatalistic about it, but alcoholism, it's just in your genes. We had some of it in my family, and it just got me.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

Emotions can even affect whether certain genes are turned "on" or "off"—altering, for example, our bodies' response to stress.

While weight loss is important, what's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes.

Your genes are not your destiny. They load the gun, but your environment pulls the trigger.

Food is not just a source of energy or calories. Food is information. It contains instructions that affect every biological function of your body. It is the stuff that controls everything. Food affects the expression of your genes (determining which ones get triggered to cause or prevent disease) and influences your hormones, brain chemistry, immune system, gut flora, and metabolism at every level. It works fast, in real time with every bite. This is the groundbreaking science of nutrigenomics.

This is also known as patient-centered health care, rather than disease-focused medicine, and it is a fundamental underpinning of functional medicine—a revolutionary new way to understand the underlying causes of disease and how our genes, our environment, and our lifestyle interact to determine health or disease.

So you're her brother?" says Lynn. "I guess we know who got the good genes."I laugh at the expression on Caleb's face, his mouth drawn into a slight pucker and his eyes wide.

our genes' primary goal is not necessarily harmony between mates, but rather greater success for themselves.

Astronomers are disclosing insights that New Agers would welcome and be attuned to. Not only do we share a common origin, and many genes, with the entire web of life on Earth, but we are linked to the cosmos. All living things depend on the stars: they are energised by the heat and light from the Sun; they are made of atoms that were forged from pristine hydrogen, billions of years ago, in faraway stars.

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.

Como biólogo especializado precisamente en el estudio de la naturaleza frente a la nutrición, no puedo dejar de destacar hasta qué punto nuestros hábitos están condicionados por la interacción más temprana entre nuestros genes y el entorno de nuestra infancia y juventud.