Richard Dawkins Quotes

We can do genetics. We can do experiments on fruit flies. We can do experiments on yeast. It's not so easy to do experiments on humans. So, in fact, it helps us, to interpret our own genetic code, to have the genetic code of the other species.

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

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

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.

Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.

By then, I was making the slow transition from classical biochemistry to molecular biology and becoming increasingly preoccupied with how genes act and how proteins are made.

The difference between humans and Neanderthals is .004 percent of gene code. That's how big the difference is, one species to another.

I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions.

Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA.

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

The mouse genome is an invaluable tool to interpret the human genome.

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

Traditional ways of distinguishing populations are irrelevant in terms of genetic code.

I became fascinated by the then-blossoming science of molecular biology when, in my senior year, I happened to read the papers by Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod on the operon theory.

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.

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.

In this atmosphere I soon became interested in nucleic acids.

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.

It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region of a particular nucleic acid molecule.

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance.

And indeed this theme has been at the centre of all my research since 1943, both because of its intrinsic fascination and my conviction that a knowledge of sequences could contribute much to our understanding of living matter.

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

What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.

Genes are effectively one-dimensional. If you write down the sequence of A, C, G and T, that's kind of what you need to know about that gene. But proteins are three-dimensional. They have to be because we are three-dimensional, and we're made of those proteins. Otherwise we'd all sort of be linear, unimaginably weird creatures.

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