Quotes About Genetics

I've got my dad's height and smoking habit. But I think I've got my mum's looks and sensibilities.

A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics.

I understand there's a history of madness in your family.

To save the human race and our world, we must correct the evolutionary mistakes by changing the genetics of men.

because unlike some, I wasn't in line when they were handling out perfect genes.

Phylogeography began in the 1980s as a way to tell the evolutionary history of natural populations of animals and plants. It usually involves looking at a large number of "markers," variable bits in the DNA of a species, for a lot of specimens from different parts of a species' area of distribution. Phylogeographers can then use such rich information on the genetic make-up of a species to trace back its history.

The amazing but in retrospect unsurprising fact established by the diligent work of many investigators in laboratory evolution over decades is that the great majority of even beneficial positively selected mutations damage an organism's genetic information—either degrading or outright destroying functional coded elements.

Harry Mount hints at the possibility that I was admitted to Magdalen in 1960 because my father had been senior scholar there a quarter of a century earlier. I was, in fact, the winner of an open scholarship; Mr Mount should learn the difference between genetics and nepotism.

One's desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin—sometimes called the master chemical of sociability—and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.

else. One's desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin—sometimes called the master chemical of sociability—and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.

The primary reason diseases tend to run in families may be that diets tend to run in families.

The population with the highest rate of the "Alzheimer's gene" has one of the lowest rates of Alzheimer's disease? This contradiction may be explained by Nigerians' extremely low blood-cholesterol levels, thanks to a diet low in animal fat104 and consisting mainly of grains and vegetables.105 So, it

Each of us contains tens of billions of miles of DNA—enough for one hundred thousand round trips to the moon if you uncoiled each strand and placed them end to end

The primary reason diseases tend to run in families may be that diets tend to run in families. For

Every year, Americans lose more than five million years of life from cancers that may have been prevented.1 Only a small percentage of all human cancers are attributable to purely genetic factors. The rest involve external factors, particularly our diet.2

In reality, human nature hardwires gender into our brains in three biological stages. The first stage has been clarified by genetics research, the second by endocrinological research, and the third by psychosocial research .7

When it comes to hiring someone for a job, "discrimination on the basis of [political] party was much stronger than discrimination on the basis of race." An information economy segregates on ideas and not on genetics.

As evolutionary neurobiologists Leah Krubitzer and Jon Kaas put it, Although the phenotype generated is context-dependent, the ability to respond to the context has a genetic basis. . . . In essence, the Baldwin effect is the evolution of the ability to respond optimally to a particular environment. Thus, genes for plasticity evolve, rather than genes for a particular phenotypic characteristic, although selection acts upon the phenotype.

The evidence from behavior genetics and twin studies indicating that 40 to 50 percent of the variance among people in temperament, personality, and many political, economic, and social preferences are accounted for by genetics.

In the memorable observation by geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

It may be possible in the not-too-distant future to use CRISPR to create whole new species.

life's business in a fundamentally different way—using a molecule other than DNA or RNA as genetic material, for example, or a different set of amino acids to build proteins.

A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable. Instead of deciding how to act in terms of personal goals, he has to surrender to the things that his body has been programmed (or misprogrammed) to do.

A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for—rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires.