Francis Crick Quotes

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

A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here.

Proteins aren't designed, they're evolved.

No human can design a good enzyme, yet we are surrounded by them after 3.5 billion years of work by evolution.

The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard.

The Human Genome Project has given us a genetic parts list.

Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations.

Back in 1962, when I had by accident become the supervisor of Roberto Celis in Argentina, it occurred to me that antibody diversity might arise from the joining by disulphide bridges of a variety of small polypeptides in combinatorial patterns.

I spent 10 years trying to find one gene.

Genome sequencing has changed taxonomy.

Mutations are exciting, there aren't nearly enough of them.

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement.

The prize was really for the molecule. In 1962, Osamu Shimomura discovered a protein in a jellyfish that caused it to glow bright green. With colleagues, 30 years later, I was able to insert this G.F.P. gene into bacteria and make them turn green.

Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.

Today we try to identify a gene and then study its properties.

The genome could be thought of as a kind of piano with twenty-five thousand keys. In some cases, a few keys may be out of tune, which can cause the music to sound wrong. In others, if one key goes dead the music turns into a cacophony, or the whole piano self-destructs.

That the primary effect of gene mutation may be as simple as the substitution of a single amino acid by another and may lead to profound secondary changes in protein structure and properties has recently been strongly indicated by the work of Ingram on hemoglobin.

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

But sequence comparisons simply can't account for the development of complex biochemical systems any more than Darwin's comparison of simple and complex eyes told him how vision worked.

Our understanding of how DNA informs our health and development is advancing at an incredible pace.

Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.

I think there are people who's lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.

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

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.

I am thrilled to see my genome.