Quotes About Biochemistry

We tend to believe that if we could just change our workplace, get married, finish writing that novel, buy a new car or repay the mortgage, we would be on top of the world. Yet when we get what we desire we don't seem to be any happier. Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.

People think that this political revolution or that social reform will make them happy, but their biochemistry tricks them time and again.

In the 21st century our tastes buds, our brain chemistry, our biochemistry, our hormones and our kitchens have been hijacked by the food industry.

Molecular biology is essentially the practice of biochemistry without a license.

I chose biochemistry as my major and graduated after 4 years with an Honours degree in Biochemistry. During that time, I had come to love biochemistry research, although I was just getting my feet wet in laboratory research.

But the power problem has its roots in anatomy and biochemistry and temperament. Power has to be curbed on the legal and political levels; that's obvious. But it's also obvious that there must be prevention on the individual level. On the level of instinct and emotion, on the level of the glands and the viscera, the muscles and the blood. If I can ever find the time, I'd like to write a little book on human physiology in relation to ethics, religion, politics and law.

One of the major lessons in all of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular medicine is that when proteins operate at the sub cellular level, they behave in a certain way as if they're mechanical machinery.

See yourself living in a new body. Hopeful = recovery. Happy = happier biochemistry. Stress degrades the bod.

adenosine triphosphate)

Without energy life would be extinguished instantaneously, and the cellular fabric would collapse.

If you stimulate seizures in an animal every day, the seizures eventually become automatic; the animal will go on having them once a day even if you withdraw the stimulation. In much the same way, the brain that has gone into depression a few times will continue to return to depression over and over. This suggests that depression, even if it is occasioned by external tragedy, ultimately changes the structure, as well as the biochemistry, of the brain.

We can easily imagine worlds in which the constants of Nature take on slightly different numerical values where living beings like ourselves would not be possible. Make the fine structure constant bigger and there can be no atoms, make the strength of gravity greater and stars exhaust their fuel very quickly, reduce the strength of nuclear forces and there can be no biochemistry, and so on.

In marked contrast to the University of Wisconsin, Biochemistry was hardly visible at Stanford in 1945, consisting of only two professors in the chemistry department.

At university - when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry - I had tried to write a children's book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf's point of view.

Proteins are constantly being degraded. Therefore, simultaneous production of proteins is required.

Arthritis, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, depression - all of those diseases are a result of our neglected biochemistry. We need to be stimulated to help fight disease. Cold is a great stimulator.

Methylation works by the use of a chemical compound, in the shape of three-leaf clovers made up of hydrogen and carbon

thyroid hormone increases the rates of most chemical reactions in all cells, thus helping to set the tempo of bodily activity.

Extremely important work is being done in the brain biochemistry section of the National Institutes of Mental Health on the subject of brain-body interaction. One of the pioneers in this research is Candace Pert, once chief of that section, whose work is demonstrating communication between the brain and different parts and systems of the body. For those interested, an excellent review of this work appeared in the June 1989 issue of Smithsonian, written by Stephen S. Hall.

Muscles do not use oxygen at a constant rate.

Genes are effectively one-dimensional. If you write down the sequence of A, C, G and T, that's kind of what you need to know about that gene. But proteins are three-dimensional. They have to be because we are three-dimensional, and we're made of those proteins. Otherwise we'd all sort of be linear, unimaginably weird creatures.

Things like muscle tension, what we eat, how we breathe, our posture, our overall level of biochemical functioning, all have a huge impact on our state.

My dad was a scientist. More than that: my dad grew up in a tiny terraced house in Swansea, the only child of a second-generation immigrant family - his father sold cloth, zips and buttons from door to door - and so science - biochemistry at Swansea University, followed by a PhD at Imperial College - was his way out, his way up.

I'm a believer in biochemistry. But I tell people to try only one thing at a time to see if it works. And if you do give a powerful drug to a kid, it better have a big wow factor.