Metabolic Pathways Quotes

The excitement of vitamins, nutrition and metabolism permeated the environment.

This oxidation of hydrogen in stages seems to be one of the basic principles of biological oxidation.

The DNA-encoded catalytic machinery of the cell can rapidly learn to promote new chemical reactions when we provide new reagents and the appropriate incentive in the form of artificial selection.

As can be seen even by this limited number of examples proteins carry out amazingly diverse functions.

Enzymes are masters of chemistry. They evolved over billions of years to perform specific biological functions. They make complex materials with virtually no waste.

Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and sudenlly you're going to live another few hours.

The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology.

Man's health and well-being depends upon, among many things, the proper functioning of the myriad proteins that participate in the intricate synergisms of living systems.

The structural or biogenetic relations of plant products as deduced from the recognizable architectural components of the molecules have been consistent guides in my investigations.

We managed to prepare a cell-free system which was active when suitably supplemented, and this was a novel result since the process of oxidation was believed to require the integrity of the cells.

Inside of a living cell there are thousands of proteins that enable it to make more of itself and make your malaria drug, for instance. We don't understand those. We don't understand how they work together.

What I want to do is demonstrate that biology can learn how to make a vast array of molecules that people thought were outside the realm of biology.

Enzymologists usually study the initial rates of reactions measuring product formation as a function of substrate concentration or other variable. Cell biologists are more likely to want to know the effect of a change on the steady state behavior of a complex system.

The physiological combustion theory takes as its starting point the fundamental principle that the amount of heat that arises from the combustion of a given substance is an invariable quantity-i.e., one independent of the circumstances accompanying the combustion-from which it is more specifically concluded that the chemical effect of the combustible materials undergoes no quantitative change even as a result of the vital process, or that the living organism, with all its mysteries and marvels, is not capable of generating heat out of nothing.

The food we eat goes beyond its macronutrients of carbohydrates, fat and protein. It's information. It interacts with and instructs our genome with every mouthful, changing genetic expression.

Nature - how, we don't know - has technology that works in every living cell and that depends on every atom being precisely in the right spot. Enzymes are precise down to the last atom. They're molecules. You put the last atom in, and it's done. Nature does things with molecular perfection.

A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics.

My Ph.D. thesis problem was to determine if the DNA content of rat tissues increased if there was B12 in the diet. This problem was suggested by my adviser based on the observation that thymine could replace vitamin B12 in a lactobacillus.

A fundamental premise in cancer therapy is trying to identify how the metabolism of cancer cells differs from normal tissue. When differences are identified, it often paves the way for treatments that will disrupt the cancer's metabolism while sparing normal tissue.

Nutrients are not drugs and they can't be studied as drugs. They are part of a biological system where all nutrients work as a team to support your biochemical processes.

Life does depend on accurate replication of molecules, and its complexity often requires that an enzyme shall accept one molecular species or type and transform it to equally specific products.

Once the principle is there, that cells have the same genes, my own personal belief is that we will, in the end, understand everything about how cells actually work.