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Genetics Quotes

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Genetics Quotes

“The foundations of population genetics were laid chiefly by mathematical deduction from basic premises contained in the works of Mendel and Morgan and their followers. Haldane, Wright, and Fisher are the pioneers of population genetics whose main research equipment was paper and ink rather than microscopes, experimental fields, Drosophila bottles, or mouse cages. Theirs is theoretical biology at its best, and it has provided a guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation and observation.”

LightScienceFieldsPaperResearchMathematicsFoundationPopulationObservationMathematicalBiologyBottlesFollowersMiceEquipmentCagesInkTheoreticalPremisesPioneersGeneticsExperimentationMicroscopesDeductionsGuiding LightMendel
Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky
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“Among the innumerable Footsteps of Divine Providence to be found in the Works of Nature, there is a very remarkable one to be observed in the exact Balance that is maintained, between the Numbers of Men and Women; for by this means it is provided, that the Species may never fail, nor perish, since every Male may have its Female, and of a proportionable Age.”

MenMayMeanEndsAgeFoundChanceNumbersFailingEffectsDivineBalanceMen And WomenFemaleSpeciesMalesRemarkableProvidenceFootstepsGeneticsDivine Providence
Author:John Arbuthnot
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“Biologists have long attempted by chemical means to induce in higher organisms predictable and specific changes which thereafter could be transmitted in series as hereditary characters. Among microorganisms the most striking example of inheritable and specific alterations in cell structure and function that can be experimentally induced and are reproducible under well defined and adequately controlled conditions is the transformation of specific types of Pneumococcus.”

WellsMeanLongCharacterConditionsExampleTypeHigherFunctionTransformationStructureSeriesDefinedCellsControlledChemicalsOrganismsPredictableGeneticsBiologistAlterationsHereditaryMicroorganismsStructure And Function
Author:Oswald Avery
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“It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.”

ScienceNatureClearTeachingTypeOughtAccountsSevenCodeAnalysisCrystalsAmbiguityGeneticsStrangeness
Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
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“The fundamental problem in the origin of species is not the origin of differences in appearance, since these arise at the level of the geographical race, but the origin of genetic segregation. The test of species-formation is whether, when two forms meet, they interbreed and merge, or whether they keep distinct.”

TwoProblemFormScienceDifferencesLevelsRaceTestsFundamentalsSpeciesAppearanceAriseSegregationFormationGeneticsOrigin Of Species
Book:Darwin's Finches
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“The problem [with genetic research] is, we're just starting down this path, feeling our way in the dark. We have a small lantern in the form of a gene, but the lantern doesn't penetrate more than a couple of hundred feet. We don't know whether we're going to encounter chasms, rock walls or mountain ranges along the way. We don't even know how long the path is.”

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Author:Francis Collins
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“What politicians do not understand is that [Ian] Wilmut discovered not so much a technical trick as a new law of nature. We now know that an adult mammalian cell can fire up all the dormant genetic instructions that shut down as it divides and specializes and ages, and thus can become a source of new life. You can outlaw technique; you cannot repeal biology. Writing after Wilmut's successful cloning of the sheep, Dolly, that research on the cloning of human beings cannot be suppressed.”

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Author:Charles Krauthammer
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“Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record.”

LongDifferentLinesNovelClearRecordsEvolutionFindingsEvidenceSpeciesPopulationFollowingContradictionFossilsNoveltyGeneticsSeemingRough TimesPaleontologyStasisGradualismGradual Change
Book:One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought
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“Cell genetics led us to investigate cell mechanics. Cell mechanics now compels us to infer the structures underlying it. In seeking the mechanism of heredity and variation we are thus discovering the molecular basis of growth and reproduction. The theory of the cell revealed the unity of living processes; the study of the cell is beginning to reveal their physical foundations.”

ProcessGrowthStudyTheoryBasesFoundationStructureUnitySeekingCellsMechanismDiscoveringMechanicVariationGeneticsReproductionHeredity
Author:C. D. Darlington
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“Geneticists believe that anthropologists have decided what a race is. Ethnologists assume that their classifications embody principles which genetic science has proved correct. Politicians believe that their prejudices have the sanction of genetic laws and the findings of physical anthropology to sustain them.”

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Author:Lancelot Hogben
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“If A denotes one of the two constant traits, for example, the dominating one, a the recessive, and the Aa the hybrid form in which both are united, then the expression: gives the series for the progeny of plants hybrid in a pair of differing traits.”

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Book:Gregor Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids: A Guided Study
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“My experiments with single traits all lead to the same result: that from the seeds of hybrids, plants are obtained half of which in turn carry the hybrid trait (Aa), the other half, however, receive the parental traits A and a in equal amounts. Thus, on the average, among four plants two have the hybrid trait Aa, one the parental trait A, and the other the parental trait a. Therefore, 2Aa+ A +a or A + 2Aa + a is the empirical simple series for two differing traits.”

TwoScienceTurnsSimpleResultsHalfFourAmountEqualPlantSeriesAverageSeedsExperimentsTraitsGeneticsOther HalfParentalHybrid
Author:Gregor Mendel
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“The three of us have worked on the development of the small and totally harmless fruit fly, Drosophila. This animal has been extremely cooperative in our hands - and has revealed to us some of its innermost secrets and tricks for developing from a single celled egg to a complex living being of great beauty and harmony. ... None of us expected that our work would be so successful or that our findings would ever have relevance to medicine.”

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Author:Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
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“We are now witnessing, after the slow fermentation of fifty years, a concentration of technical power aimed at the essential determinants of heredity, development and disease. This concentration is made possible by the common function of nucleic acids as the molecular midwife of all reproductive particles. Indeed it is the nucleic acids which, in spite of their chemical obscurity, are giving to biology a unity which has so far been lacking, a chemical unity.”

GivingYearsMadeCommonDevelopmentEssentialsDiseaseFunctionUnityFiftySpiteConcentrationBiologyChemicalsLackingParticlesAcidObscurityGeneticsHeredityMidwifeFermentation
Author:C. D. Darlington
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“When two plants, constantly different in one or several traits, are crossed, the traits they have in common are transmitted unchanged to the hybrids and their progeny, as numerous experiments have proven; a pair of differing traits, on the other hand, are united in the hybrid to form a new trait, which usually is subject to changes in the hybrids' progeny.”

TwoDifferentHandsFormScienceUnitedCommonSubjectsPlantExperimentsPairsTraitsProvenGeneticsHybridProgeny
Book:Gregor Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids: A Guided Study
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“Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.”

IfsStillsHandsWould BeReligionStrongWaterTheorySourceEvolutionLuckyEvidenceTinyPredictionsDistributionFossilsCorpsesGeneticsFractions
Book:The God Delusion
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“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.”

MenWayDoeOrderBlackNaturalMistakeMysteryTalentObjectsExpectedBridgesComposerEngineersConstructsGeneticsCursedBuilderNatural Order
Book:Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel
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“Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.”

IfsGivingWellsLooksBigsMightKidsFatherHeavenGrowsGrowing UpCuttingGoes OnBirthDadAngelHeySatanDemonTailsMiceAdversariesUpbringingGeneticsOld Days
Author:Terry Pratchett
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“The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory-founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted by and brought up by the science of genetics, and ecologists, being modest people, are apt to forget their distinguished parenthood.”

PeopleHas BeensScienceNaturalForgetTheoryEvolutionObservationParenthoodModestSelectionAdoptedDistinguishedGeneticsEcologicalNatural SelectionTheory Of Evolution
Author:John L. Harper
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“Fossil bones and footsteps and ruined homes are the solid facts of history, but the surest hints, the most enduring signs, lie in those miniscule genes. For a moment we protect them with our lives, then like relay runners with a baton, we pass them on to be carried by our descendents. There is a poetry in genetics which is more difficult to discern in broken bomes, and genes are the only unbroken living thread that weaves back and forth through all those boneyards.”

MomentsFactsHomeScienceLyingDifficultOur LivesBrokenProtectEndureBonesGenesThreadRunnersRuinedFossilsBack And ForthHintsFootstepsGeneticsUnbrokenBatonRelays
Author:Jonathan Kingdon
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“Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.”

ImportantRealPoliticalUnderstandingPoorHellProgressModernCreationPoliticianInnovationMedicineLifestyleDriversStabilityEnginesElectricityGeneticsSteamInventingSteam EnginesGood PoliticiansMicroprocessor
Author:Bill Gates
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“You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.”

PeopleThinkingShouldFactsBigsWould BeCausesStuffBornCommonStruggleProtectAnd LoveStriveBoundsHardestThickThings In LifeHardest ThingGeneticsLove One AnotherSpiralsSure ThingNo Brainer
Book:Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
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“We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more.”

KnowsHappenedFieldsEvolutionEvidenceBiologyDiverseFossilsGeneticsAnatomyGeologyPhysiologyConvergencePaleontologyMolecular BiologyAnatomy And Physiology
Book:Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
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“In no sense other than an utterly trivial one is reproduction the inverse of chemical disintegration. It is a misunderstanding of genetics to suppose that reproduction is only 'intended' to make facsimiles, for parasexual processes of genetical exchange are to be found in the simplest living things.”

FoundProcessChemicalsMisunderstandingSimplestLiving ThingsGeneticsReproductionDisintegrationInverse
Book:The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science
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“The Genealogical Science is a wonderful account of how old-fashioned race science has come to be re-defined by resort to the most recent developments in genetics. But this book is not simply another story of the ideological uses to which science may be put. Nadia Abu El-Haj has provided the reader with a very detailed analysis of the historical entanglement between science and politics. Her study should be required reading for anyone interested in the sociology of science-and also for those dealing with Middle Eastern nationalisms. This is a work of outstanding value for scholarship.”

ShouldMayBookStoriesUseValuesReadingRaceStudyWonderfulMiddleDevelopmentReaderAccountsHistoricalDefinedAnalysisNationalismSociologyOld FashionedEasternResortsOutstandingScholarshipIdeologicalGeneticsEntanglement
Author:Talal Asad
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“Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works.”

ThinkingKnowsDoeShowsProblemProcessNaturalStepsSafeMountainEvidenceLet MeSelectionGeneticsNatural Selection
Author:David M. Raup
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