DNA Damage Quotes

Only 20 percent of our longevity is genetically determined. The rest is what we do, how we live our lives and increasingly the molecules that we take. It's not the loss of our DNA that causes aging, it's the problems in reading the information, the epigenetic noise.

human genetics has taught us that when it comes to our telomerase, we humans live on a knife edge. OK, simply put, yes, nudging up telomerase does decrease the risks of some diseases, but it also increases the risks of certain and rather nasty cancers.

What do cells do when they see a broken piece of DNA? Cells don't like such breaks. They'll do pretty much anything they can to fix things up. If a chromosome is broken, the cells will repair the break using an intact chromosome.

Aging is basically the build-up of error: error at the genetic level, error at the cellular level. Cells normally repair themselves; that's why you heal when you get a cut. But even the mechanism of repair eventually falls apart.

The idea that cancer genes are sitting inside each and every one of our chromosomes, just waiting to be corrupted or inactivated and thereby unleashing cancer, is, of course, one of the seminal ideas of oncology.

If you asked me what caused aging, I would say free radicals and molecules, which spontaneously shift and form and cause damage in all our cells and genes. The body usually repairs and replaces the damage in these genes. But as you get older, the aging clock turns down those defenses.

There's almost no food that isn't genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution. Things change because our planet is subjected to a lot of radiation, which causes DNA damage, which gets repaired, but results in mutations, which create a ready mixture of plants that people can choose from to improve agriculture.

Your body thinks radium is a great thing to pack into bone - where it kills some cells outright and scrambles the DNA of others, causing problems like cancer.

The bodies we have are not made for extended use. We must cope with accumulated DNA damage, cell damage, muscle atrophy, bone loss, decreased muscle mass, and joints worn out from overuse during a lifetime of bipedal locomotion. It might have worked great for prehistoric humans, but it wreaks havoc on our knees and hips.

In the 1960s and '70s, there wasn't much evidence at all. We knew vaguely the causes of cancer, but methods like genomics were very new.

You would think that UV just causes mutations, but it doesn't; you need a gene to be active for it.

Without micronutrients to remove waste, cells become congested, DNA gets broken, and the body doesn't have the ability to repair itself. Eventually, you get sick.

Activating oxygen can produce compounds called radicals that put oxidative stress on cells. Such stress could ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases.

Aging is not one process. It's many different things going on that cause us to age. I have a program that at least slows down each of these different processes.

Aging is mostly the failure to repair.

Oregano is such an antioxidant-rich herb that researchers decided to see if it could reduce the DNA-damaging effects of radiation.

A short telomere represents a persistent and non-repairable damage to the cells, which is able to prevent their division or regeneration.

Cancer is a disease of the genome. And that's what happens. You make mistakes in a cell somewhere in your body that causes it to start to grow when it should've stopped, and that's cancer. And those mistakes are mistakes of DNA.

Cancer was not disorganized chromosomal chaos. It was organized chromosomal chaos