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Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic say they have completed a rough draft of the entire human genetic code. BBC News December 1999
It is humbling for me and awe inspiring to realise that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God. Dr Francis Collins, Human Genome Project
I think we will view this period as a very historic time, a new starting point. Dr Craig Venter, Celera Genomics
This is the outstanding achievement not only of our lifetime but in terms of human history. I say this, because the Human Genome Project does have the potential to impact on the life of every person on this planet. Dr Michael Dexter, Wellcome Trust
Today we are learning the language in which God created life. Bill Clinton
We have to focus on the possibilities, develop them and then face up to the hard ethical and moral questions that are inevitably posed by such an extraordinary scientific discovery. Tony Blair
We share 51% of our genes with yeast and 98% with chimpanzees – it is not genetics that makes us human. Dr Tom Shakespeare, University of Newcastle
The availability of the genome sequence is just the beginning. Scientists now want to understand the genes and the role they play in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Dr Randy Scott, President of Incyte
We’ve now got to the point in human history where for the first time we are going to hold in our hands the set of instructions to make a human being. Dr John Sulston, UK Sanger Centre
I never thought it would be done as quickly as this. Professor Fred Sanger, co-inventor of DNA sequencing
It would surprise me enormously if in twenty years the treatment of cancer had not been transformed. Dr Mike Stratton, Cancer Genome Project
It [Human Genome Project] represents an immense step forward for humanity in deciphering the make-up of life itself. Yoshiro Mori, Japanese Prime Minister
We humans think and move like members of a herd in more ways than we might realise. Human Swarm, Channel 4 2013
Temperature can make us not as individuals but as a collective mass, a human swarm. ibid.
When the temperature drops by a few degrees our food consumption goes up. ibid.
Our bodies are survival machines for genes. Richard Dawkins, Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life II, Channel 4 2012
Our genes appear to trade long life for reproduction. ibid.
Individual human beings are there as machines for propagating their genes. Richard Dawkins, BBC Thinking Aloud
The Selfish Gene never made claims about the selfishness of human psychology ... It’s the selfish gene but not the selfish individual. ibid.
In humans the brain has taken over in such a big way that it becomes positively misleading to try to explain human behaviour in a simple-minded naive vehicle for the genes ... What governs how humans behave is an extremely complicated mixture of our genetically provided brains overlain by a massive infusion of culture. Richard Dawkins
They are in you and in me; they created us, ‘body and mind’ and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence ... they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene ch2
What Bill Hamilton did in 1964 was to realise that what matters is not just reproduction, not just producing children, but assisting the survival of your own genes. Richard Dawkins, interview A Beautiful Mind
The image of the organism including ourselves as a machine for passing on genes to shift the focus away from the idea of the organism as being the agent in life to the immortal replicator. Richard Dawkins, televised interview 1987
Altruism, like any other behaviour, must have evolved over time as brains have evolved. Richard Dawkins, The Genius of Darwin II, Channel 4 2008
Selfish genes give rise to altruistic individuals. ibid.
In the world of genes, the occasional flaws in replication (mutations) see to it that the gene pool contains alternative variants of any given gene – ‘allele’ – which may therefore be seen as competing with one another. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p192
How easy it is for the non-random selection of genes – the ‘carving and whittling’ of gene pools – to produce truly dramatic changes in anatomy and behaviour, and so fast. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth p37
Gene pools, on the other hand, are continually added to, for example by mutation, while at the same time non-random death subtracts. ibid. p37
Whether or not a given gene is turned on in a given cell at a given time is determined, often via a cascade of other genes called switch genes or controller genes, by the chemical environment of the cell. ibid. p243
What Darwin didn’t – couldn’t – know is that the comparative evidence becomes even more convincing when we include molecular genetics, in addition to the anatomical comparisons that were available to him. ibid. p315
The complete deciphering of the human genome is one of those achievements that makes me proud to be human. ibid. p316
The fluke wants the ants to go up on to the tops of the grass stems where they are more likely to be eaten. So the fluke actually burrows into the brain of the ant and makes a lesion in the brain of the ant which changes the behaviour of the ant so it goes up instead of down – that increases the chance that the fluke will be eaten by the sheep … This is an adaptation by the fluke gene … The extended phenotype of the genes in the fluke. Richard Dawkins, with Matt Dillahunty Vancouver 6th November 2016
Nature or Nurture: and I said you can only really talk about genes for variation in things, so you can’t say there’s a gene for intelligence or a gene for mathematics, what you can say is there are several genes … Mathematical ability is much too complicated to be determined by a gene … Richard Dawkins, interview Joan Bakewell Hay Festival 2017, Youtube 56.57
The genes are made of nucleic acid – that’s where the action is. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 12/13: Generation Upon Generation, BBC 1973
On 2nd April 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick sent to Nature the paper which describes this structure in DNA. ibid.
The child is not a prisoner of its inheritance ... The child is an individual, the bee is not. ibid.
In 1922 Haldane came here to Trinity College, Cambridge, and concluded that genes were the mechanism by which natural selection worked. This meant that Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection wasn’t so much about the survival of the fittest individuals, as the survival of the best adapted genes. This changed the focus entirely and began a new line of enquiry into what the scientist Richard Dawkins would call The Selfish Gene. Haldane then applied this to human behaviour and morality. Andrew Marr, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, BBC 2009
With two-hundred and fifty areas of genomes that have undergone recent natural selection, it’s clear that we have evolved away from our ancestors more than anyone anticipated. Dr Alice Roberts, Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? BBC 2011