J. Michael Bishop Quotes

DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.

Virus particles contain single molecules of nucleic acid.

According to physical measurements, DNA chains are, on the average, 10,000 units long.

Natural DNA is a tractless coil, like an unwound and tangled audiotape on the floor of the car in the dark.

Analysis of the composition of samples of DNA from a great variety of sources and by many investigators revealed the remarkable fact that the purine content always equals the pyrimidine content.

When I was 16, my dad took me to a DNA conference at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, California, and I was captivated by this way of looking at biology and by the discussions of bits of nucleic acid that could make us sick.

[Professor Pauling] confesses that he had harboured the feeling that sooner or later he would be the one to get the DNA structure; and although he was pleased with the double-helix, he 'rather wished the idea had been his'.

Years ago R.N.A. was kind of a bit player in the cell. Now our picture's completely inverted, and we think R.N.A.'s really the important thing.

DNA is an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism, a complex string of syllables.

All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary.

I am terribly proud of-I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are DNA!

We have a huge amount of DNA in common with jellyfish.

Biology sometimes reveals its fundamental principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre.

The Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins was founded and directed by Tom Pollard, an engaging young scientist with remarkable energy and enthusiasm.

In my early work, our molecular views of telomeres were first focused on the DNA.

April 25th is DNA Day. I know, you probably had no idea.

I started doing science when I was effectively 20, a graduate student of Salvador Luria at Indiana University. And that was - you know, it took me about two years, you know, being a graduate student with Luria deciding I wanted to find the structure of DNA; that is, DNA was going to be my objective.

'Genes, Girls, and Gamow' was an attempt, even more than 'The Double Helix,' to mix science with one's personal life. With 'The Double Helix,' no one had done it before, but I thought I'd try.

DNA is a 'thing' - a chemical that sticks to your fingers.

There really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out.

Decoding the human genome is the most significant undertaking that we have mounted so far in an organized way in all of science. I believe that reading our blueprints, cataloguing our own instruction book, will be judged by history as more significant than even splitting the atom or going to the moon.

To a theoretical physicist, there is no greater joy than to see that this curious activity we call calculation - the depositing of ink on paper, followed by throwing away the paper and depositing new ink on more paper - can actually tell us something about reality.

It was Max Perutz who inspired me to go into structural biology when he gave a lecture at Harvard in 1963. As soon as I heard him talk, I decided that this is what I want to do.

The DNA-encoded catalytic machinery of the cell can rapidly learn to promote new chemical reactions when we provide new reagents and the appropriate incentive in the form of artificial selection.

When I started engineering proteins I didn't know how hard it would be.