Genome Quotes

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.

Frederick Sanger

Adam & Eve have been degraded, reduplicated forever, photocopies of photocopies, mistakes copied, magnified, augmented.

Parts of our genome simply cannot survive a situation where the environment suffers from the full overload of toxins we currently live in.

Kat Lahr

Every new discovery about the genome is consistent with evolution having happened. Whether we find it appealing or not is another question, but personally I like being fourth cousin to a mushroom and having a bonobo as my closest living relative. It makes me feel a real part of the world.

History repeats itself, in part because the genome repeats itself. And the genome repeats itself, in part because history does. The impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires that drive human history are, at least in part, encoded in the human genome. And human history has, in turn, selected genomes that carry these impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires. This self-fulfilling circle of logic is responsible for some of the most magnificent and evocative qualities in our species, but also some of the most reprehensible. It is far too much to ask ourselves to escape the orbit of this logic, but recognizing its inherent circularity, and being skeptical of its overreach, might protect the week from the will of the strong, and the 'mutant' from being annihilated by the 'normal'.

Siddhartha Mukherjee