Sam Kean Quotes

Genes themselves are made of bits.

The nucleic acids have considerable biological importance because of their role in cell growth and in the transmission of hereditary characters.

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.

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

Every cell in your body contains the same genetic information.

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

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.

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

It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.

Genes are like the story, and DNA is the language that the story is written in.

Most organisms have loads of junk DNA - less pejoratively, noncoding DNA - cluttering their cells.

Before the Human Genome Project, most scientists assumed, based on our complex brains and behaviors, that humans must have around 100,000 genes; some estimates went as high as 150,000.

We used to think that our destiny is in the stars. Now we know that its in our genes, in our DNA.

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

Genomics are about individuals. It's about what's specific to you, not your siblings, not your parents - each of us is totally unique. We will only see that uniqueness by drilling down to the genetic code.

When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.

We know that at conception, the genetic code is there for a unique individual. This is not something that is just a religious belief.

We still don't know what evolutionary significance to attach to it, but it is at the very least interesting that a telomere gene is related to obesity.

My genetic makeup is a little bit crazy.

Throughout my life, I've had consistent DNA.

Sequencing DNA on the ISS will enable NASA to see what happens to genetic material in space in real time, rather than looking at a snapshot of DNA before launch and another snapshot of DNA after launch and filling in the blanks.

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.

It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.

There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.