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Biochemistry Quotes

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Biochemistry Quotes

“I get a prompt about using my Dissociative Cognition System. It takes considerable effort to make even that decision, but I manage to give my systems the OK and immediately I can step back from the crushing burden of misery, cut off from certain aspects of my own biochemistry so that I can function and make rational decisions. It was an essential mod, for someone who was going to be on their own for long periods of time without any social contact. My emotions are still out there, and I can get fascinating readouts about what that locked-away part of me is actually feeling, good, indifferent, bad, worse, but it doesn't touch me unless I choose to open the door again. It's a fine line, I suspect, between useful logic and that pathological numbness that true depression can often lead to, where doing or wanting anything seems like climbing uphill.”

DepressionEmotionsLogicCognitionNumbnessDissociativeBiochemistry
Book:Elder Race
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“Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. Many of them don't have much to do with evolution - they're observations about the details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on - but many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that only benefit a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth.”

TruthScienceEvolutionExperimentsBiologyDnaDinosaursPhysiologyScientific TruthBiochemistryObservationsFossilSpecial CreationVestigial OrgansEvidence For EvolutionPrecambrian
Book:Why Evolution Is True
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“The domestication of plants in the Neolithic Revolution with the move from hunting and gathering to farming led to large-scale cultivation of various plants and hence greater potential availability of plant toxins than could have been present in the wild.”

PsychologyAbuseBiologyDrugsMaleBiochemistryEvolutionary Psychopathology
Book:Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
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“Every chemical compound, according to Engels, comes into existence only at a certain time in the development of the universe when the conditions are appropriate for it; and when it does come into existence it manifests this by entering into its characteristic relations. Neither carbon compounds or proteins are ideal forms, but are themselves witnesses of the conditions on a cooling planet. It is here that occurs his celebrated remark that life is the mode of existence of proteins.”

CommunismBiologyMarxismMarxBiochemistryEngelsDialectical Materialism
Book:Marx and science
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“The night before a biochemistry class, I read the last year's lecture notes. I look at the pictures in the book. Now, I've got the general concept. Sure...There's a couple of details to fill in and a a few things to memorize. But that's no big deal. I've got the big picture, and that's all I need. Bring it on professor, I'm ready. That's right. The next day, I'm a goalie sitting in the front row. "Nothin gets past me." My ability to comprehend a biochemistry lecture just went from 30% to 95%. I went on to score 780 out of a possible 800 on the medical school boards exam in biochemistry. Given that the 99th percentile began around 690, this was one of the highest scores in the USA, perhaps the highest.”

LearningMemoryMultitaskingBiochemistryStudy SkillsAccelerated LearningBecome SmarterNote TakingBetter GradesSpeed LearningStraight A SCrush ActRaise IqStraight A S In CollegeStraight A S In High SchoolCrush McatCrush SatLearn FasterTandem ProcessingPrereadingBiochemClass PreparationPre Reading
Author:Peter Rogers MD
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“The night before a biochemistry class, I read the lecture notes from last year. I look at the pictures in the book. I read some of the book. Now, I've got the general concept. Sure...There's a couple of details to fill in and a few things to memorize. but that's no big deal. I've got the big picture and that's all I need. Bring it on professor. I'm ready. That's right. The next day, I'm a goalie sitting in the front row. Nothin gets past me... My ability to comprehend a biochemistry lecture just went up from 30% to 95%. I went on to score 780 out of a possible 800 on the medical school biochemistry boards exam (USMLE 1). Given that the 99th percentile began around 690, this was one of the highest scores in the USA, perhaps the highest.”

LearningMemoryMultitaskingBiochemistryStudy SkillsAccelerated LearningBecome SmarterNote TakingBetter GradesSpeed LearningStraight A SCrush ActRaise IqStraight A S In CollegeStraight A S In High SchoolCrush McatCrush SatLearn FasterPrereadingBiochemClass PreparationPre Reading
Book:Straight A at Stanford and on to Harvard
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“Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter of each gigantic cell trailed a continuous loop of these bright green dots. They spun . . . they pulsed, pressed, and thronged . . . they shone, they swarmed in ever-shifting files around and around the edge of the cell; they wandered, they charged, they milled, raced . . . they flowed and trooped greenly . . . All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts . . . If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish’s tail.”

ScienceNatureAnimalPlantBiologyChemistryFactKnowBiochemistryLifebloodPage 127 8
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry—which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books—that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's.”

ScienceNatureWatsonBiochemistryNobel LaureateGeneralizationsStrikingJames WatsonJames D WatsonGamowGeorge Gamow
Author:Francis Crick
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“I would not be among you to-night (being awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) but for the mentors, colleagues and students who have guided and aided me throughout my scientific life. I wish I could name them all and tell you their contributions. More, however, than anyone else it was the late Rudolf Schoenheimer, a brilliant scholar and a man of infectious enthusiasm, who introduced me to the wonders of Biochemistry. Ever since, I have been happy to have chosen science as my career, and, to borrow a phrase of Jacques Barzun, have felt that 'Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment'.”

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Author:Konrad Bloch
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“Most people have probably met enzymes in school biology as the agents responsible for digesting our food, breaking down the starch of pasta, rice, potatoes into sugar and so on. Many meet them again as they face their washing machine, stained sports clothes in hand, and wonder whether or not to use a ‘biological’ detergent, containing added but unspecified ‘enzymes’ to do mysterious things to the clothes. As it happens, in both contexts the enzymes’ function is very similar, breaking down large chemical molecules into smaller bits that will wash away. People do not generally realize, however, that enzymes have much wider and more diverse roles and that, in effect, they orchestrate the whole of life.”

BiochemistryEnzymes
Book:Enzymes: A Very Short Introduction
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“We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.”

KnowsFirstsHas BeensWholeUniverseProcessTermWonderMagicEvolutionFirst TimeTransformationSpeciesComplexesCreatorPhysicsAstronomyBiologyUnpredictableTissuesGeologyStunningReservoirsBiochemistryPaleontologyMolecular BiologyProcess Of Change
Author:Kenneth R. Miller
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“The biochemistry and biophysics are the notes required for life; they conspire, collectively, to generate the real unit of life, the organism. The intermediate level, the chords and tempos, has to do with how the biochemistry and biophysics are organized, arranged, played out in space and time to produce a creature who grows and divides and is.”

RealGrowsSpaceLevelsProduceCreaturesNotesOrganizedDividesOrganismsUnitsTime And SpaceChordsTempoBiochemistry
Book:The Sacred Depths of Nature
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“The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself - not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day.”

WayYearsBookHardDonePastBeliefProcessPrinciplesDesignHard WorkFlowLogicIntelligentSacredConclusionAgentsDataConsiderationFortyOver The PastIntelligent DesignBiochemistryHumdrum
Author:Michael Behe
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“It is now widely realized that nearly all the 'classical' problems of molecular biology have either been solved or will be solved in the next decade. The entry of large numbers of American and other biochemists into the field will ensure that all the chemical details of replication and transcription will be elucidated. Because of this, I have long felt that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of biology, notably development and the nervous system.”

LongProblemLyingNextFeltNumbersFieldsDevelopmentResearchDetailsDecadesNervousBiologyChemicalsExtensionsEntryLarge NumbersNervous SystemBiochemistryMolecular BiologyReplicationTranscription
Author:Sydney Brenner
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“The first entirely vital action, so termed because it is not effected outside the influence of life, consists in the creation of the glycogenic material in the living hepatic tissue. The second entirely chemical action, which can be effected outside the influence of life, consists in the transformation of the glycogenic material into sugar by means of a ferment.”

FirstsMeanActionInfluenceCreationMaterialsTransformationChemicalsSugarTissuesBiochemistry
Author:Claude Bernard
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“All the more recent work on alkaptonuria has... strengthened the belief that the homogentisic acid excreted is derived from tyrosin, but why alkaptonuric individuals pass the benzene ring of their tyrosin unbroken and how and where the peculiar chemical change from tyrosin to homogentisic acid is brought about, remain unsolved problems.”

ProblemIndividualBeliefRingsChemicalsPeculiarAcidUnbrokenHaving StrengthBiochemistryUnsolved ProblemsBenzene
Author:Archibald Garrod
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“As a progressive discipline [biochemistry] belongs to the present century. From the experimental physiologists of the last century it obtained a charter, and, from a few pioneers of its own, a promise of success; but for the furtherance of its essential aim that century left it but a small inheritance of facts and methods. By its essential or ultimate aim I myself mean an adequate and acceptable description of molecular dynamics in living cells and tissues.”

MeanFactsLastsLeftCenturyDisciplinePromiseEssentialsUltimateAimMethodCellsDescriptionProgressiveAcceptableAdequateInheritancePioneersTissuesDynamicsCharterBiochemistry
Author:Frederick Gowland Hopkins
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“For it is not cell nuclei, not even individual chromosomes, but certain parts of certain chromosomes from certain cells that must be isolated and collected in enormous quantities for analysis; that would be the precondition for placing the chemist in such a position as would allow him to analyse [the hereditary material] more minutely than [can] the morphologists ... For the morphology of the nucleus has reference at the very least to the gearing of the clock, but at best the chemistry of the nucleus refers only to the metal from which the gears are formed.”

Would BeCertainIndividualPositionMaterialsEnormousCellsClockAnalysisChemistryMetalsQuantityIsolatedGearsChemistHereditaryNucleusBiochemistryChromosomesMorphologyEnormous Quantities
Author:Theodor Boveri
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“If the juices of the body were more chymically examined, especially by a naturalist, that knows the ways of making fixed bodies volatile, and volatile fixed, and knows the power of the open air in promoting the former of those operations; it is not improbable, that both many things relating to the nature of the humours, and to the ways of sweetening, actuating, and otherwise altering them, may be detected, and the importance of such discoveries may be discerned.”

IfsKnowsWayMayBodyScienceAirHumourResearchDiscoveryImportanceFormerOperationsFixedJuicePromotingImprobableNaturalistBiochemistry
Book:Some Considerations Touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental Naturall Philosophy, ... by the Honorable Robert Boyle Esq; ...
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“In trying to evaluate Hopkins' unique contribution to biochemistry it may perhaps be said that he alone amongst his contemporaries succeeded in formulating the subject. Among others whose several achievements in their own fields may have surpassed his, no one has ever attempted to unify and correlate biochemical knowledge so as to form a comprehensible picture of the cell and its relation to life, reproduction and function.”

TryingMaySaidFormScienceSubjectsFieldsAchievementUniqueFunctionRelationCellsContributionBiographiesEvaluateReproductionHopkinsBiochemistry
Author:Marjory Stephenson
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“My main thesis will be that in the study of the intermediate processes of metabolism we have to deal not with complex substances which elude ordinary chemical methods, but with the simple substances undergoing comprehensible reactions... I intend also to emphasise the fact that it is not alone with the separation and identification of products from the animal that our present studies deal; but with their reactions in the body; with the dynamic side of biochemical phenomena.”

FactsBodyProcessSidesSimpleAnimalDealsStudyProductsOrdinaryMethodComplexesSeparationReactionsSubstanceChemicalsNot AloneIdentificationThesisEludeMetabolismBiochemistry
Author:Frederick Gowland Hopkins
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“The mechanist is intimately convinced that a precise knowledge of the chemical constitution, structure, and properties of the various organelles of a cell will solve biological problems. This will come in a few centuries. For the time being, the biologist has to face such concepts as orienting forces or morphogenetic fields. Owing to the scarcity of chemical data and to the complexity of life, and despite the progresses of biochemistry, the biologist is still threatened with vertigo.”

KnowsStillsProblemFacesScienceForceKnowledgeProgressCenturyFieldsConceptsConstitutionStructurePropertyVariousSolveConvincedDespiteCellsDataComplexityChemicalsThreatenedPreciseScarcityOwingBiologistBiochemistryVertigo
Author:Andre Michel Lwoff
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“The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle-an architect.”

KnowsWorldWellsDoeTogetherOrderChanceExistencePrinciplesKnow HowTypeDependsEvolutionFunctionComplicatedDuesConvincedConceptionArchitectOrganismsUnbelievableLiving ThingsInterconnectionBiochemistryExistence Of Life
Author:Allan Sandage
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