genes

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine genetic __itness_ (i.e., which person fits within the triangle, and who lives outside it), then the question that confronts our current era is what happens when this power devolves to the individual. It is a question that requires us to balance the desires of the individual_ to carve out a life of happiness and achievement, without undue suffering_ with the desires of a society that, in the short term, may be interested only in driving down the burden of disease and the expense of disability. And operating silently in the background is a third set of actors: our genes themselves, which reproduce and create new variants oblivious of our desires and compulsions_ but, either directly or indirectly, acutely or obliquely, influence our desires and compulsions. Speaking at the Sorbonne in 1975, the cultural historian Michel Foucault once proposed that __ technology of abnormal individuals appears precisely when a regular network of knowledge and power has been established._ Foucault was thinking about a __egular network_ of humans. But it could just as easily be a network of genes.

It was easier to ignore the consideration of paternal genes then than it would be now. We did not then consider ourselves held in the genetic trap. We thought each infant was born pure and new and holy: a gold baby, a luminous lamb. We did not know that certain forms of breast cancer were programmed and almost ineluctable, and we would not have believed you if you had told us that in our lifetime young women would be subjecting themselves to preventative mastectomies.

Meditation works in many layers. It works in our genes, in our DNA

Walt Disney had a nuclear imagination before the advent of nuclear, some comprehension of apocalypse and rapture deep in his genes.

Life is not found in atoms or molecules or genes as such, but in organization; not in symbiosis but in synthesis.

A DNA sequence for the genome of bacteriophage ΦX174 of approximately 5,375 nucleotides has been determined using the rapid and simple 'plus and minus' method. The sequence identifies many of the features responsible for the production of the proteins of the nine known genes of the organism, including initiation and termination sites for the proteins and RNAs. Two pairs of genes are coded by the same region of DNA using different reading frames.

TP53 seems to encode the greater good, like a suicide pill in the mouth of a soldier that dissolves only when it detects evidence that he is about to mutiny.

Except for the rare cases of plastid inheritance, the inheritance of all known cofactors can be sufficiently accounted for by the presence of genes in the chromosomes. In a word the cytoplasm may be ignored genetically.

Stress can alter the expression of genes, which can affect the response to stress and so on. Human behavior is therefore unpredictable in the short term, but broadly predictable in the long term.

If you want to know if your kid is going to be fast, the best genetic test right now is a stopwatch. Take him to the playground and have him face the other kids.' Foster's point is that, despite the avant-garde allure of genetic testing, gauging speed indirectly is foolish and inaccurate compared with testing it directly - like measuring a man's height by dropping a ball from a roof and using the time it takes to hit him in the head to determine how tall he is. Why not just use a tape measure?

I have all these great genes, but they're recessive. That's the problem here.

Skinny jeans were only good if you had skinny genes.

Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.

This exciting new field of epigenetics--meaning literally "around" the gene--allows us to see how environmental factors alter our gene expression in a specific place within each cell. As a result, we now know that when we take active control of these factors, we can literally help control our health and genetic destiny.

The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortext from genes.

She looked for any sign of the boy who'd taught her to whistle a hornpipe, who could palm an ace of hearts and make it reappear from her sleeve, but failed to find even a glimmer of him. Instead she saw Ida taking on a second life in the features of her only son, and for a quick heartbeat Jo was almost grateful for the scar tissue dimpled across her cheek, forehead, and chin. No one would ever be able to invade her face, she realized. She would always simply be herself, whether she liked it or not.

The strange fact that out of millions of people in the world, your mother and father met and decided to get married to each other. And out of the millions of sperm, that the one with your genes was the one that made it to the egg and fertilised the egg. I'll never forget it.