Jeffrey Kluger Quotes

Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA.

If you know the mother's genome and the father's genome, and you see that the children have some genes that neither parent has, then you know that difference is either a mutation or a processing error.

We carry stores of DNA in our nuclei that may have come in, at one time or another, from the fusion of ancestral cells and the linking of ancestral organisms in symbiosis. Our genomes are catalogues of instructions from all kinds of sources in nature, filed for all kinds of contingencies.

I spent 10 years trying to find one gene.

Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.

Every time I went to the doctor when I was in my twenties, he repeated the same thing to me: don't wait too long to have children.

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

Genes themselves are made of bits.

Long before genetics became a flourishing field, Christians have spoken about sin as an inherited condition.

In the beginning of the human race there was no genetic load which would cause undesirable traits such as appear in offspring of marriages between relatives today.

By the time I was in high school, Roe v. Wade had passed, so that was also happening; girls were getting pregnant and getting abortions - and that happened in my school too.

By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.

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

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

I'm terrified that I'm genetically predisposed to only having boys. That's frightening. By the time I was 10 years old, and I'm not exaggerating, I knew how to patch drywall.

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.

I just read that Time magazine cover story with all this information about how you have to have your kids by the time you're 12 or it's all over. Please.

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

It seems like, to me, somewhere between 30 and 35 is a really, really good time to turn your eggs into babies.

My genetics are good, but they aren't crazy He-Man style.

The problem with Ebola is that it makes mistakes while it copies itself. The mistakes are actually good for Ebola because they help Ebola change, and as a result of this, as it jumps from one human body to the next, roughly half the time, it's got a mutation.

In college, I had an early introduction to classical genetics from Professor Dan Lindsley, also an extraordinary teacher who influenced me greatly.

The general rule is that anything that is passed on in reproduction does not undergo senescence.

A young woman in her teens has about 300,000 eggs in her ovaries. By the time she is menopausal, none are left.

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.