Mutation famous quotes

We find in the history of ideas mutations which do not seem to correspond to any obvious need, and at first sight appear as mere playful whimsies such as Apollonius' work on conic sections, or the non-Euclidean geometries, whose practical value became apparent only later.
-- Arthur Koestler

#Sight #Ideas #Mutation

You would think that UV just causes mutations, but it doesn't; you need a gene to be active for it.
-- Cynthia Kenyon

#Thinking #Mutation #Needs

In the early '90s, we discovered mutations that could double the normal life span of worms.
-- Cynthia Kenyon

#Mutation #Normal #Normal Life

First of all, many human diseases are influenced by, if not caused by mutations in genes.
-- Daniel Nathans

#Mutation #Disease #Firsts

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains.
-- Edward Lawrie Tatum

#Mutants #Mutation #Culture

In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory...
-- Erwin Schrodinger

#Energy #Mutation #Variation

A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here.
-- Francis Crick

#Ideas #Acid #Mutation

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement.
-- Francis Crick

#Agreement #Mutation #Acid

This seems highly likely, especially as it has been shown that in several systems mutations affecting the same amino acid are extremely near together on the genetic map.
-- Francis Crick

#Together #Mutation #Maps

If life really depends on each gene being as unique as it appears to be, then it is too unique to come into being by chance mutations.
-- Frank B. Salisbury

#Unique #Mutation #Chance

Many words are in a state of mutation, the pronunciation being unsettled even in the best society, a result that must often arise where language is as variable and undetermined as the English.
-- James F. Cooper

#Mutation #Variables #Language

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.
-- James Lovelock

#Engineering #Worry #Mutation

Engaging it produces an intense force, which in turn produces a mutation in consciousness. You become who you really are ...
-- Jean Houston

#Mutation #Consciousness #Intense

How comes it to pass, if they be only moved by chance and accident, that such regular mutations and generations should be begotten by a fortuitous concourse of atoms.
-- John Smith

#Atoms #Mutation #Generations

A decade or so ago, all over the world, cinemas underwent one of those prince-into-frog mutations, and became, instead popcorn-restaurants, which offered the option of visual diversions for diners.
-- Kevin Myers

#Hollywood #Mutation #Popcorn

Every mutation through a new combination of genetic factors that provides the organism with a new opportunity for coming to terms with the conditions of its environment signifies no more and no less than that new information about this environment has got into that organic system. Adaptation is essentially a cognitive process.
-- Konrad Lorenz

#Opportunity #Mutation #Information

Sickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future.
-- Lauren Slater

#Fall #Mutation #Fever

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
-- Lionel Trilling

#Acceptance #Self #Mutation

I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.
-- Lynn Margulis

#Mutation #Taught #Accumulation

The accumulation of genetic mutations were touted to be enough to change one species to another….No. It wasn’t dishonesty. I think it was wish fulfillment and social momentum. Assumptions, made but not verified, were taught as fact.
-- Lynn Margulis

#Thinking #Wish #Mutation

The unique nature about the influenza virus is its great potential for changes, for mutation.
-- Margaret Chan

#Unique #Viruses #Mutation

In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.
-- Michael Behe

#Serendipity #Luck #Mutation

The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.
-- Peter Wessel Zapffe

#Mind #Tragedy #Mutation

Although I insist that God has always had the power to intervene directly in nature to create new forms, I am willing to be per-suaded that He chose not to do so and instead employed secondary natural causes like random mutation and natural selection.
-- Phillip E. Johnson

#Causes #Mutation #Natural

No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.
-- Pierre-Paul Grasse

#May #Matter #Mutation

Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal.
-- Rebecca Skloot

#Cells #Viruses #Mutation

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.
-- Richard Dawkins

#Opposites #Society #Mutation

It's impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species.
-- Richard Goldschmidt

#Mutation #Impossible #Evolution

Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising
-- Robert Smithson

#Mutation #Advertising #Language

Programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by mutations and recombination, life gave rise to Shakespeare; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet.
-- Seth Lloyd

#Imagination #Firsts #Mutation

Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject.
-- Theodosius Dobzhansky

#Sacrifice #Imperfection #Mutation

Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.
-- Walter Mosley

#Writing #Mutation #Fiction

It is probably fair to estimate the frequency of a majority of mutations, in higher organisms, between one in ten thousand and one in a million per gene per generation.
-- Francisco J. Ayala

#Majority #Mutation #Generations

Nearly every BRCA mutation carrier's main concern is how to avoid the fate of relatives who have had, and possibly died from, breast or ovarian cancer.
-- Kristi Funk

#Cancer #Fate #Mutation

It is absolutely a good thing that she [Angelina Jolie] helped to educate the world about the existence of this mutation; hopefully, as a result, more compassionate understanding exists regarding the choices BRCA carriers must face.
-- Kristi Funk

#Choices #Understanding #Mutation

Cancer can no longer be classified according to the organ in which it arises. It has to be characterized in terms of the genetic mutation that exists.
-- Laurie Glimcher

#Cancer #Mutation #Arise

D.N.A. sequences change by mutations, and the idea behind the molecular clock is that those changes occur at, more or less, a constant rate, over time.
-- Mark Stoneking

#Ideas #Mutation #Clock

There is some research that suggests that viruses like the flu are really actually kind of at the razor's edge when it comes to mutation. They're mutating so fast that if they mutated much faster they would actually develop a lot of harmful mutations that could slow them down and cripple them and eventually literally drive them extinct.
-- Carl Zimmer

#Viruses #Mutation #Research

When you get sick with the flu you get infected with flu viruses and they make lots of new flu viruses, but those new viruses are not exact copies of the old ones. They have mutations in them. A lot of those mutations are harmful.
-- Carl Zimmer

#Sick #Viruses #Mutation

The food you eat is among the most significant factors affecting your genes and pushing them toward cancer by causing mutation or disruption in their function. That is, what you eat can either prevent cancer and other chronic illnesses or help cause them.
-- Dharma Singh Khalsa

#Cancer #Mutation #Pushing