Quotes About Biology

We are sick because our cells are sick.

The difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics is a bit like the difference between biology and medicine. Knowing that certain genes increase the risk of cancer is relatively easy. Figuring out exactly which people will get sick, or how to cure them, is a lot more complicated.

Sick animals can lead to sick people.

Just living longer and being sick is the worst. But the idea that you could have fewer diseases, and just have a healthy life and then turn out the lights, that's a good vision to have. And I think what we know about some of these pathways suggests that might be possible.

We still don't know what evolutionary significance to attach to it, but it is at the very least interesting that a telomere gene is related to obesity.

I am of the school that believes, for the most part, that gays are born and not made. That is, I believe - and there appears to be significant scientific evidence to back me up - that there is a genetic predisposition to be gay.

Sometimes it is claimed by those who argue that race is just a social construct that the human genome project shows that because people share roughly 99% of their genes in common, that there are no races. This is silly.

If you go to the octopus, and if you're not too squeamish, dissect it. You'll find that it has a camera eye which is remarkable similar to our own. And yet we know that the octopus belongs to an invertebrate group called cephalopod mulluses, evolutionarily very distant indeed from the chordates to which we belong.

One would think that plants belonging to the same genus would always produce identical or at least similar oils. But this is by no means so.

The old age of lower mammals presents characters similar to those found in man.

Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA.

Microchimeric sharing means that, even if the mother loses a child, she'll have a small memento of him or her secreted away inside her. Similarly, a bit of our mothers live on in all of us no matter how long ago Mom died.

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics.

Even with seemingly simple things like eye color, you can't tell from my genetic code whether I have blue eyes or not. So it's naive to think that complex human behaviors, like risk-seeking, are driven by changes in one or two genes.

For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few.

It is a bad idea to say that discrimination is wrong only because the traits of all people are indistinguishable. It is a bad idea to say that violence and exploitation are wrong only because people are not naturally inclined to them. It is a bad idea to say that people are responsible for their actions only because the causes of those actions are mysterious. It is a bad idea to say that our motives are meaningful in a personal sense only because they are inexplicable in a biological sense.

If you on't like bacteria, you're on the wrong planet.

This healthy dependence is the essence of romantic love. The bodies of lovers are linked in a "neural duet." One person sends out signals that alter the hormone levels, cardiovascular function, body rhythms, and even immune system of the other. In loving connection, the cuddle hormone oxytocin floods lovers' bodies, bringing a calm joy and the sense that everything is right with the world. Our bodies are set up for this kind of connection.

Every animal with blood in its veins and horns on its head will fight when it is attacked. How much more so will man, who carries in his breast the faculties of love and hatred, joy and anger! When he is pleased, a feeling of affection springs up within him; when angry, his poisoned sting is brought into play. That is the natural law which governs his being. . .

The dolphins' evolutionary path is itself a preposterous feat: their predecessors were land mammals that resembled small, hooved wolves.

According to the doctor-historian Ann Dally, "Virchow, probably the greatest pathologist of the nineteenth century, wrote, 'Woman is a pair of ovaries with a human being attached; whereas man is a human being furnished with a pair of testes.' " The French physician Achille Chereau argued that "it is only because of the ovary that woman is what she is.

His knee was killing him, was not going to support him for much longer, but of far greater importance seemed the erection shoving against the constriction of his jeans. Biological imperative.

Each strand of corn silk is actually a hollow tube connected to the undeveloped mother cob. The pollen travels down the silk to the cob, where it forms a single kernel. Each kernel has its own silk attached to it. Someone up there thought of everything, because they even made it so the silk is covered with a sticky substance that catches the pollen. To make sure it doesn't just blow away.

Esta imprevisibilidad de la evolución indica que nada está escrito de antemano, que todo es posible. Muestra que el grupo biológico más floreciente puede extinguirse a causa de cambios en el medio físico o por culpa de la competencia con otros grupos de organismos. Ninguna forma de vida puede considerarse superior a las demás, porque ninguna está a salvo de la hecatombe.