Stem-cell research is the key to developing cures for degenerative conditions like Parkinson’s and motor-neuron disease from which I and many others suffer. The fact that the cells may come from embryos is not an objection, because the embryos are going to die anyway. Stephen Hawking
Scientists are hunting for a life-form that could help defeat one of humanity’s biggest killers ... Cyanobacteria because it’s known to have special biological properties. Brave New World with Stephen Hawking: Biology, Mark Evans in Panama, Channel 4 2012
It’s the properties in this marine snot that Kevin and his colleagues are studying. ibid.
What would it be like if we could harness these extraordinary natural processes and shape them to our own purpose? ... It’s called Synthetic Biology. ibid. Professor Richard Dawkins
ECM or Extra-Cellular Matrix: it’s a biological structure on which a body can build or rebuild itself and its found in all animals. ibid. Joy Ridenberg in Pittsburgh
The more we discover about DNA the more complex it becomes. ibid. Hawking
There’s some new evidence that what we do to our genes can affect not only our children but our children’s children. ibid. Professor Robert Winston
Epigenetics and the study of the way genes function will be one of the most significant advances in health care in the next decade. ibid.
We have finally read the Book of Life. Dr Adam Rutherford, The Gene Code: Unlocking the Code, BBC 2011
How does the genetic code work? ibid. Letter from Gamov to Crick
Scientists already knew that chemicals called proteins made living tissue ... Proteins themselves are made of smaller building blocks: amino acids. ibid.
What no-one knew was how DNA made each of us different. ibid.
A gene is a unit of inheritance. ibid.
Professor Davies’ discovery of the gene variety linked to DMD ... is a genuine landmark. ibid.
Fred Sanger ... His lifelong love for unpicking the molecules of life ... Winning two Nobel prizes: well that’s just showing off. ibid.
A T C G. ibid.
Reading the code is one thing; but understanding all of it is something else. ibid.
They could only find around 24,000 genes in the human genome; by far the majority of code in our DNA seemed to be useless ... Junk DNA ... 98% of our genome is not genes, and doesn’t code for proteins. ibid.
Everyone’s DNA is almost identical. ibid.
Diabetes is 70% genetic, and 30% environmental. ibid.
Many traits were more inheritable than the previous studies had revealed ... The Missing Inheritability. ibid.
This wasteland is far more important than we had previously imagined. ibid.
That is how science works: it’s a journey, a continuous exploration of how things work and who we are. ibid.
Our planet is bursting with life ... Every single thing that has ever existed on earth has one thing in common: and it’s this: DNA ... This stuff is the most ingenious code in the universe ... And what an amazing story we’ve uncovered. Dr Adam Rutherford, The Gene Code II: The Book of Life
Complex cells like the ones we’re made of suddenly appeared. ibid.
For the first billion years or so life on Earth consisted entirely of simple single cells like bacteria and archaea. Then about two billion years ago more complex cells appeared. ibid.
Mitochondria: the host now had the power to become bigger. ibid.
We can see about two hundred genes scattered around my chromosomes that ... originally came from archaea ... We found short stretches of DNA that are uncannily similar to bacteria. ibid.
Back to our wormy friends: in June 2008 the entire Amphioxus genome sequence was finished; it revealed that our genome is essentially a Ampioxus genome quadrupled. ibid.
The genes that build these bones are essentially the same in all species. ibid.
How do cells know what to do? What goes on inside cells? How do these tiny structures make living organisms? Dr Adam Rutherford, The Chemistry of Life: The Cell, BBC 2011
Every organ and tissue is made of different types of cells working together. And that all cells come from other cells ... Somehow cells must contain the secret of life itself. ibid.
DNA was confirmation that there were something special inside the nucleus of cells. ibid.
Somehow when cells divide they pass on the essence of life from cell to cell. ibid.
Boveri was predicting the existence of genes. ibid.
Scientists had peered into the cell nucleus: they had found chromosomes. And they had shown that these chromosomes carry information we inherit: genes. But they still had no idea how. ibid.
Avery got a result: stripped of their DNA the power of the lethal bacteria to transform other cells simply vanished. ibid.
DNA was controlling cells. ibid.
How DNA was built: and this turned out to be the most famous story in Biology ... Crick and Watson had worked out the structure of DNA. ibid.
DNA’s structure had revealed the secret of how genes are reproduced every time a cell divides. ibid.
To make a living organism takes a staggering amount of DNA. ibid.
Each of these genetic switches controlled one major chunk of the fly’s body. ibid.
The story of the cell is the story of the evolution of life itself. ibid.
DNA is a chain of chemicals organised into genes. Each gene holds the instructions to build a specific protein. Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell, BBC 2012
This is what [Professor Sir] Alec Jeffreys [Leicester University] comes up with in 1984: The DNA profile. James Burke, Connections s3e7: A Special Place, BBC 1993
DNA ... as individual as a fingerprint – until now. Humans on demand, custom-copied from any original. People made in the lab and not in the womb. Are rogue doctors in secret labs cloning human beings? Conspiracy Files Unsealed: Cloning, BBC 1997
The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry. Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men p10
What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam’s razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit
‘You’, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul 1994
It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid – usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their generic material. Francis Crick
It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. Francis Crick & James D Watson, proposing double helix
No good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong. James Dewey Watson
Some day a child is going to sue its parents for being born. They will say, my life is so awful with these terrible genetic defects and you just callously didn’t find out. James Dewey Watson
DNA is a universal software code. From bacteria to humans, the basic instructions for life are written with the same language. San Francisco Chronicle
During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project. Sydney Brenner
The human form has been genetically manipulated, and we used to have far more strands of DNA that we do now. And this all relates to this junk DNA they don’t know what it does – well I’ll tell you what it does: it connects us to all those frequency areas we could decode at one point we can’t decode now. David Icke, interview Alex Jones, Dark Forces behind the New World Order