Quotes About Gene

A germ-line replicator (which may be active or passive) is a replicator that is potentially the ancestor of an indefinitely long line of descendant replicators. A gene in a gamete is a germ-line replicator. So is a gene in one of the germ-line cells of a body, a direct mitotic ancestor of a gamete.

As I said, the active/passive distinction cuts across the germ-line/dead-end distinction. All four combinations are conceivable.

A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection.

The gene is a long-lived replicator, existing in the form of many duplicate copies. It is not infinitely long-lived. Even a diamond is not literally everlasting, and even a cistron can be cut in two by crossing-over. The gene is defined as a piece of chromosome which is sufficiently short for it to last, potentially, for long enough for it to function as a significant unit of natural selection.

The effect of the gene depends on its environment, and this includes other genes. Sometimes a gene has one effect in the presence of a particular other gene, and a completely different effect in the presence of another set of companion genes. The whole set of genes in a body constitutes a kind of genetic climate or background, modifying and influencing the effects of any particular gene.

An itinerant selfish gene/ Said 'bodies a- plenty I've seen./ You think you're so clever/ But I'll live for ever./ You're just a survival machine.

From the viewpoint of this book an animal artefact, like any other phenotypic product whose variation is influenced by a gene, can be regarded as a phenotypic tool by which that gene could potentially lever itself into the next generation.

In principle, we may consider any portion of chromosome as a potential candidate for the title of replicator.

The long-lived gene as an evolutionary unit is not any particular physical structure but the textual archival information that is copied on down the generations. [I]t is widely distributed in space among different individuals, and widely distributed in time over many generations. [A] successful gene will be one that does well in the environments provided by these other genes that it is likely to meet in lots of different bodies.

If the phenotypic change in the artefact had an influence on the success of replication of the new gene, natural selection would act, positively or negatively, to change the probability of similar artefacts existing in the future.

The gene's extended phenotypic effect, say an increase in the height of the dam, affects its chances of survival in precisely the same sense as in the case of a gene with a normal phenotypic effect, such as an increase in the length of the tail.

What makes a gene good? As a first approximation I said that what makes a gene good is the ability to build efficient survival machines—bodies. We must now amend that statement. The gene pool will become an evolutionarily stable set of genes, defined as a gene pool that cannot be invaded by any new gene.

No doubt this works well enough for The Tale of Benjamin Bunny or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I can readily see that 'The Selfish Gene' on its own, without the large footnote of the book itself, might give an inadequate impression of its contents.

The gene is the basic unit of selfishness.

There is no intrinsic tendency in gene pools for particular genes to increase or decrease in frequency. But when there is a systematic increase or decrease in the frequency with which we see a particular gene in a gene pool, that is precisely and exactly what we mean by evolution.

I was very fortunate in my gene mix. The gambling instincts I inherited from my father were matched by my mother's gift for analysis.

My mother was a lupus patient. I was a child with the lupus gene.

The distance between a gene and a behavior is of greatest interest to me. The relative contributions of nature and nurture, of nucleotide and nuclear family, are perpetually fascinating to me.

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard.

Perhaps," he continued, "this capacity for evil is in all of us, then, and it's largely down to fortune whether we encounter the circumstance that breathes life into it or not. Just as it's luck that determines when or if that faulty gene breaks and gives you cancer or Marfan or the physique of an Olympian.

One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.

My whole family is missing that sports gene. I hope I didn't screw that up by marrying a great golfer.

The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard.