Mutations Quotes

Our experience in fooling around with the genes of mice has taught us that many of the traits that interest us are not definite products of specific mutations but emergent phenomena arising from extremely complex interactions between genes, environment, and life experience.

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

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.

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.

Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events – some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.

In agriculture, people have taken wild plants that can’t be eaten by people – and turned them into wonderful food sources. And that’s because genomes can change, and people working with plants have picked mutations. Mutations are nothing more than genetic changes.

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.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet.

Life has survived for more than three billion years because it is robust, and almost no mutations can easily outwit the defense mechanisms built up through eons of exposure to potential pathogens.

All human beings are, in fact, born with dozens of mutations their parents lacked, and a few of those mutations could well be lethal if we didn’t have two copies of every gene, so one can pick up the slack if the other malfunctions.

Just like mutations to DNA in biological organisms allow for evolution through natural selection, forking lets us run multiple experiments in parallel where the strongest versions survive.

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

I think, with every kind of creature and every kind of human, there is no better. We’re all just mutations, and I think that each mutation should be celebrated.

There are certain mutations you can find across cancers in different organs.

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

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.

If we didn’t have genetic mutations, we wouldn’t have us. You need error to open the door to the adjacent possible.

Chance is hugely significant in biology. In fact, the presence of apparent randomness in so many aspects of biology – from mutations in DNA to the chance involved in that one sperm reaching that one egg that became you – suggests that randomness is useful, even necessary, in very many cases.

Most mutations involve typos: Something bumps a cell’s elbow as it’s copying DNA, and the wrong letter appears in a triplet – CAG becomes CCG.

When any fat is heated to frying temperatures, toxic volatile chemicals that can cause genetic mutations are released into the air.

Things look especially bleak for common killers such as diabetes and heart disease. Those ailments clearly have a genetic component. But when scientists survey genes looking for which mutations patients have in common, they come up empty.

Mutations can arise anywhere in the genome, in gene DNA and noncoding DNA alike. But mutations to genes have bigger consequences: They can disable proteins and kill a creature.

Although not yet routine, many cancer centers have the technology to sequence some or all of a patient’s cancer genome. This can provide massive amounts of valuable information about your cancer, including whether you have genetic mutations and other abnormalities for which new drugs are available.

Our science and advisory board think that nuclear lamin dysfunction is a side-effect of DNA damage and mutations, rather than the cause. We are currently trying to mend nuclear dysfunction using Human Telomerase reverse transcriptase.