Michael Rosbash Quotes

These signal diversities which constitute differences of race in animals... can only be explained by two principles... namely, the occasional production of an offspring with different characters from those of the parents, as a native or congenital variety; and the propagation of such varieties by generation.

Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

The elementary particles which form the embryo are each drawn from the corresponding structure in the parent, and conserve a sort of remembrance of their previous form, so that in the offspring they will reflect and reproduce a resemblance to the parents ... We can thus readily explain how new species are formed... by supposing that the elementary particles may not always retain the order which they present in the parents, but may fortuitously produce differences, which, multiplying and accumulating, have resulted in the infinite variety of species which we see at the present time.

Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.

Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.

Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.

All animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions... and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.

Chance is hugely significant in biology. In fact, the presence of apparent randomness in so many aspects of biology - from mutations in DNA to the chance involved in that one sperm reaching that one egg that became you - suggests that randomness is useful, even necessary, in very many cases.

We're not the best, but we happen to be what evolution came up with.

All organisms vary, and it's just folk knowledge. You just have to look around a room of people, and everybody knows that it's true. Darwin didn't know the mechanism of heredity, but you don't have to. You just need to know the fact of it.

People will say, "You're never going to convince me that something as complicated as an eye could come about by sheer chance." And the answer is that natural selection is the very opposite of sheer chance. Natural selection is a non-random process.

Evolution ... is opportunistic, hence unpredictable.

Genes are natural resources.

It used to be thought that our genes were historically immutable and that it was not possible to imagine a conversation between culture and genetics.

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

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

Humans are mutants, everything's a mutant - things that evolve.

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.

You can't have life without the genetic code.

My prime interests are in evolution and development. I use the cellular slime molds as a tool to seek an understanding of those twin disciplines.

The real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us.

Each race (or variety) is characterized by a more or less distinct combination of inherited morphological, behavioral, physiological traits.

A solid foundation in genetics is increasingly important for everyone.