Quotes About Biology

The research I have been doing - studying how foodstuffs yield energy in living cells - does not lead to the kind of knowledge that can be expected to give immediate practical benefits to mankind. If I have chosen this field of study, it was because I believed in its importance in spite of its theoretical character.

Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.

Within one year of starting work, I had found that the nucleus of an endoderm cell from an advanced tadpole was able to yield some normal development up to the nuclear transplant tadpole stage.

If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages.

Shilpa Shetty Kundra and Bipasha Basu have yoga DVDs, but no one has come up with a fitness app. My app is targetted more at boys, because I believe that male and female genetics are different.

In the universe of possibilities that exist for life, we've shown that it is a very easy possibility for life as we know it to include silicon in organic molecules. And once you can do it somewhere in the universe, it's probably being done.

As a young boy, I was obsessed with endangered species and the extinct species that men killed off. Biology was the subject in school that I was incredibly passionate about.

When a young man massacres innocents, we have been trained to believe that the act was due to improper levels of chemical enzymes and misfiring synapses. As we learn more about our cells, we forget more about our souls.

Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there's not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery.

Stem cells have the potential to be used to treat and better understand some of the world's most deadly and disabling diseases.

Charles Darwin and I and you broke off from the family tree from chimpanzees about five million years ago. They're still our closest genetic kin. We share 98.8 percent of the genes. We share more genes with them than zebras do with horses. And we're also their closest cousin. They have more genetic relation to us than to gorillas.

One of the things about genetics that has become clearer as we've done genomes - as we've worked our way through the evolutionary tree, including humans - is that we're probably much more genetic animals than we want to confess we are.

For a tree, to endure four months of daylight is like you or I going without sleep for four months.

Most of the tree of life is effectively arranged.

I've always been more interested in organisms that can move on their own than in stationary plants. But when I canoe or hike along the edge of lakes or oceans and see trees that seem to be growing out of rock faces, I am blown away. How do they do it?

Think of a forest, then imagine taking 10,000 trees and squeezing them together until there is essentially no space between them. That's what the neocortical column looks like.

I know about trees. I know about how they eat all the carbon.

Biology has progressed tremendously due to the model that Darwin put forth. But the black boxes Darwin accepted are now being opened, and our view of the world is again being shaken.

I wonder how biology can explain the physical pain you feel in your chest when all you want to do is be with someone.

Usually based on an economic agenda, white working-class voters don't buy into this whole biology-chemistry-abortion-gender agenda as much as they want more take-home pay. They want affordability.

Microorganisms will give you anything you want if you know how to ask them.

constructed with the help of specific enzymes. For example, each of the systems involved in the processing of genetic information requires energy at many discrete steps.

Agassiz explained his reasons for doubting the creative power of natural selection. Small-scale variations, he argued, had never produced a "specific difference" (i.e., a difference in species). Meanwhile, large-scale variations, whether achieved gradually or suddenly, inevitably resulted in sterility or death. As he put it, "It is a matter of fact that extreme variations finally degenerate or become sterile; like monstrosities they die out.

At the close of the nineteenth century, most biologists thought life consisted solely of matter and energy. But after Watson and Crick, biologists came to recognize the importance of a third fundamental entity in living things: information.