Sam Kean Quotes

What is it that keeps you so interested in the telomere? It's so intricate and complicated, and you want to know how it works.

Therefore, I reasoned that study of the cell cycle responsible for the reproduction of cells was important and might even be illuminating about the nature of life.

I think you can say that life is a system in which proteins and nucleic acids interact in ways that allow the structure to grow and reproduce. It's that growth and reproduction, the ability to make more of yourself, that's important.

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.

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

My introduction to cell cycle control was provided by a clear, scholarly and beautiful seminar given by John Gerhart one afternoon in the summer of 1979.

Life needs a membrane to contain itself so it can replicate and mutate.

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 was a close observer of the developments in molecular biology.

Nuclear DNA encodes all the proteins and enzymes that make you you, basically.

The egg of every species of animal or plant carries a definite number of bodies called chromosomes. The sperm carries the same number. Consequently, when the sperm unites with the egg, the fertilized egg will contain the double number of chromosomes.

In basic research, the use of the electron microscope has revealed to us the complex universe of the cell, the basic unit of life.

Biology is far from understanding exactly how a single cell develops into a baby, but research suggests that human development can ultimately be explained in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. Most scientists would make a similar statement about evolution.

Life is the division of human cells, a process which begins at conception.

Molecular biology has routinely taken problematic things under its wing without altering core ideas.

In this atmosphere I soon became interested in nucleic acids.

If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.

I became aware of the very complex internal organization in a cell from the basic science classes, and it made me think about how all that could work. It seemed like a great mystery, especially how organelles in the cell can be arranged in three dimensions, and how thousands of proteins could find their way to the right location in the cells.

Nucleic acids are the main information-carrying molecules of the cell, and, by directing the process of protein synthesis, they determine the inherited characteristics of every living thing. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA).

You'd need a very specialized electron microscope to get down to the level to actually see a single strand of DNA.

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

In 1978, Elizabeth Blackburn, working with Joe Gall, identified the DNA sequence of telomeres. Every time a cell divides, it gets shorter. But telomeres usually don't. So there must be something happening to the telomeres to keep their length in equilibrium.

Life is a DNA software system.

Heredity is to-day the central problem of biology. This problem may be approached from many sides—that of the breeder, the experimenter, the statistician, the physiologist, the embryologist, the cytologist—but the mechanism of heredity can be studied best by the investigation of the germ cells and their development.

Biology - DNA - is technology. It is coding. It is physical coding, but still code.