Sam Kean Quotes

I have this idea of trying to catalog all the genes on the planet.

We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.

The Human Genome Project has given us a genetic parts list.

The human genome contains so much data that, it has been calculated, it would fill 43 volumes of Webster's International Dictionary.

In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.

I would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity among other ethnic groups - a 'Faces of America 2.'

I'm fascinated with genetic science, and I have been for a very long time. I always look at science and technology because I think that the developments in my lifetime have been so remarkable - and we're only at the tip of the iceberg with projects like decoding the human genome.

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.

The genome could be thought of as a kind of piano with twenty-five thousand keys. In some cases, a few keys may be out of tune, which can cause the music to sound wrong. In others, if one key goes dead the music turns into a cacophony, or the whole piano self-destructs.

I never dreamed that in my lifetime my own genome would be sequenced.

One of the most exciting aspects of 23andMe is that we're enabling you to watch a revolution unfold live during your lifetime, and I think that the decoding of the genome, in my opinion, is the most fascinating discovery of our lifetime, and you get to be part of it.

Genes are mysterious things, still unpredictable after all of our research, flecks of humanity that can destroy lives but, just as often, can teach us to appreciate the strange wonder of our existence.

Genes are natural resources.

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid - usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.

Each part of our genome is unique. We would not be alive if there was not a single mathematical solution for our chromosomes. We would just be scrambled goo.

We know virtually all of the genes known to mammals. We do not know all of the combinations.

We can do genetics. We can do experiments on fruit flies. We can do experiments on yeast. It's not so easy to do experiments on humans. So, in fact, it helps us, to interpret our own genetic code, to have the genetic code of the other species.

People think if you have deciphered the genome of humans that you can change everything. But you cannot change everything, because you do not know what the genes mean, and you have no methods for changing them, and you can't do experiments with humans like you can with animals.

The origin of each of us stems from codes of genetic inheritance.

Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to 0.8 gigabytes of information, or about what you can fit on a CD. With a microwave radio transmitter, you could beam that amount of information into space in a few minutes, and have it travel to anyone at light speed.

The fact is that proprietary databases don't work for such basic and broadly needed information as the sequence of the human genome.

You can't have life without the genetic code.

DNA is the master blueprint for life and constitutes the genetic material in all free-living organisms and most viruses. RNA is the genetic material of certain viruses, but it is also found in all living cells, where it plays an important role in certain processes such as the making of proteins.

Our understanding of how DNA informs our health and development is advancing at an incredible pace.