Quotes About Biology

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.

Your cells are not working as hard as your dog's but harder than your horse's. The bigger the animal, the less energy needed to sustain a gram of tissue.

There was endometrial tissue outside of where it belonged, and the cancer developed from that.

Breast cancer is thought to use cholesterol to help the cancer migrate and invade more tissue.

What do women do when they get together? We sit around and talk! Men, not so much. My theory is that this difference is genetic and dates back to the hunter-gatherer societies, when the men had to be quiet as they hunted, lest they scare away the bison and then everyone starved to death and it was all their fault.

All basic scientists who look to the NCI for funding should know that I will tolerate no retreat on the study of model systems and the pursuit of fundamental biological principles.

Most sharks can't tolerate freshwater but bull sharks have a quirk of their physiology that enables them to.

Prescient experts of biological codes.

Cancer is a sneaky animal. It starts right in the middle of normal cells so that our immune system does not recognize it and destroy it

Flowers are plant penises

Stem cells are like toenail clippings with a better career plan.

The models that characterize the robustness of neuronal networks bear little resemblance to the molecular biology models used to explain brain cell function, which in turn differ from the psychological models used to explain cognitive biases.

There are actually some women in the world with four color receptor cells in their eyes, which can allow them to see 100 million colors. To put that into perspective for you, a typical human only has three color receptors and can only see about one million colors.

The reason men have nipples is because all embryos start off as females in the womb.

Q: Why do bees have sticky hair? A: Because they use honeycombs.

Q: Why do men fart more frequently than women? A: Because women don't stay quiet long enough to build up the pressure.

The problem began with his telomeres. What is a telomere? Picture the little plastic bits on the end of your shoelaces. Imagine each time you tie your shoes, you have to clip off a little bit of that plastic part to get it to go through the lace holes. After you've done this enough times, the plastic tip is gone and the shoelace starts to unravel. Once the laces unravel enough, it's impossible to tie your shoes, and you walk around looking like a goober.

Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?

The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture.

Researchers at the University of Iowa have for years been studying a woman, known in the literature as S.M., whose amygdala was destroyed by a rare disease—and who cannot, as a consequence, experience fear.)

Fear sharpens the senses. Anxiety paralyzes them. —KURT GOLDSTEIN, The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology (1939)

We have taken control of biology, but not of ourselves.

Evolution of form is very much a matter of teaching very old genes new tricks!

What a tragic irony, that the more we understand of biology, the less we have of it to learn from and enjoy. What will be the legacy of this new century - to cherish and to protect Nature or to see butterflies and zebras and much more vanish into legend like the thylacine, moa and dodo?