Quotes About Genetics

More important still, we do not yet know how many of these differences are really due to the different genetic endowments of the different races and sexes, and how many are due to poor schools, poor housing, and other factors that are the result of past and continuing discrimination. Perhaps all of the important differences will eventually prove to be environmental rather than genetic.

Genetic evidence, of individuals across the world, alive now, shows that all non-African people are descended from one small group that must have passed through the Arabian peninsula.

It is now known that the basic mutation rate in DNA is 0.71 per cent per million years. Working back from the present difference between chimpanzee and human DNA, we arrive at a figure of 6.6 million years ago for the chimpanzee–human divergence.5

It is a dangerous thing with brothers, to think that you could be as strong as them, or as wise as them, or as good as them. To believe that you could have been the same person, if only you hadn't gone a different way. To think that your parents raised you the same, and that your genes combined the same, and that the rest of what has happened in all your triumph . . . or failure.

From the moment of conception, when the one tiny sperm joins the nutrient-rich egg, women are already contributing much more than the man.

Given the prevalence of snake fears among humans and our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, it is reasonable to believe that those who were indifferent to dangerous snakes were more likely to die and less likely to become our ancestors.

Children strengthen marital bonds, reducing the probability of divorce, by creating a powerful commonality of genetic interest between a man and a woman.

molecular genetic studies show that there has been an acceleration of human adaptive evolution over the past 40,000 years, and especially during the past 10,000 years

In brief encounters, it seems, women demand sexy partners who are highly desirable to other women, perhaps because their sons stand a greater chance of being sexy themselves. Women, of course, do not think these thoughts; there is no conscious calculus of genetic effects. They just find some men sexy and that's all they need to produce sons who will be sexually successful.

Women's reproductive success has historically been limited not by the number of mates they can accumulate but, rather, by the genetic quality of a single mate, by his ability to accrue resources, and by his willingness to funnel those resources to her and her children. All modern women have inherited these mating desires from their successful maternal ancestors.

I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human—I only love to be so.

I'm not ambitious, I never have been; it's just not in my DNA.

I don't know if I was born an alcoholic, but I was definitely born anxious.

one of the first assemblies of smart molecules had been the crew of that ingenious unit called the gene.† An even grander molecular fusion had been the chromosome—a knottily twisted rope of genes which not only worked together,* but fused so tightly that they formed a massive mega-molecule.

I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

While we may continue to use the words smart and stupid, and while IQ tests may persist for certain purposes, the monopoly of those who believe in a single general intelligence has come to an end. Brain scientists and geneticists are documenting the incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses.

Genetic variants related to intelligence appear, therefore, to be associated with health.

Well, the human genome has massive redundancy - that means that two per cent of the DNA does all the work of instructing the ribosomes that build the proteins that make up the cells of your body. Ninety-eight per cent of your DNA just sits there doing nothing. Taking up space in the gene.

In fact, Wilson and King showed that the difference in the average protein-coding gene sequences of chimps and modern humans was about 1 percent. In other words, the proteins that we use in our day-to-day biology are nearly identical to those that chimpanzees and bonobos use.

Hank was his parents' child in every respect. Whether through propinquity or some mystery of DNA, Hank had Lilly's driving ambition, but it would be repeatedly subverted by Lon's tendency to backslide.

We're Irish, Jake, which means heredity carries us halfway to madness smack out of the womb.

I think insanity runs in the family. Hell, it practically gallops.

You can never tell how genes ricochet.

For each gene in your genome, you quite often get a different version of that gene from your father and a different version from your mother. We need to study these relationships across a very large number of people.