A Quote by Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

We share half our genes with the banana.

Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

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Banana Genes Half Our Share

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Robert May, Baron May of Oxford
Australian - Scientist
Born: January 8, 1938

We share half our genes with the banana. [After the announcement Jun 2000 that a working draft of the genetic sequence of humans had been completed by the Human Genome Project.]

Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

Charles Darwin and I and you broke off from the family tree from chimpanzees about five million years ago. They're still our closest genetic kin. We share 98.8 percent of the genes. We share more genes with them than zebras do with horses. And we're also their closest cousin. They have more genetic relation to us than to gorillas.

Colin Camerer

Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, "The mountain is, and is not." They would think, "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.

Terry Pratchett

Yes, genes are important for understanding our behavior. Incredibly important - after all, they code for every protein pertinent to brain function, endocrinology, etc., etc. But the regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.

Robert Sapolsky

The best herb I smoke in Jamaica and Africa. African - Rasclot! Them people cure it in a banana. In a banana skin. A green banana. They wrap it up in a banana so when you get it, it compressed and, I'll tell you, it great! Blood clot! In Nigeria and Ghana, love that herb! Good herb, mon.

Bob Marley

My own diagnosis of my problem is a simpler one. It's that I share 50 per cent of my genome with a banana and 98 per cent with a chimpanzee. Banana's don't do psychological consistency. And the tiny part of us that's different - the special Homo sapiens bit - is faulty. It doesn't work. Sorry about that.

Sebastian Faulks

Everyone recognises that genes are part of the story but autism isn't 100% genetic. Even if you have identical twins who share all their genes, you can find that one has autism and one doesn't. That means that there must be some non-genetic factors.

Simon Baron-Cohen

We know cancer is caused ultimately via a link between the environment and genes. There are genes inside cells that tell cells to grow and the same genes tell cells to stop growing. When you deregulate these genes, you unleash cancer. Now, what disrupts these genes? Mutations.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

Richard Dawkins

I look better with a tan, but I've never gone the fake route. I don't need to - I have good foreign genes: half Spanish, half Hungarian.

Anton du Beke

And if you listen to Irish music, they say that kilts came from the middle east. So really I'm an Arab. If you listen to the way someone like Sinead O'Connor sang. It could be Muslim. You know that angst that sort of ****. That wail. I think it's in our genes. I think certain stuff is in our genes, like nobody can dance like a black guy. It's in their genes. So we don't have oil, but we have poetry.

Gavin Friday

The regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.

Robert M. Sapolsky

Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread. Also, Mother Teresa said that in India, a woman dying in the street will share her banana with anyone who needs it, whereas in America, people amass and hoard as many bananas as they can to sell for an exorbitant profit. So half of them go bad, anyway.

Anne Lamott

He must understand that if he is the world's finest plum and someone he loves does not like plums, he has the choice of becoming a banana. But he must be warned that if he chooses to become a banana, he will be a second rate banana. But he can always be the best plum.

Leo Buscaglia

Recently, results of the Human Genome Project have shattered one of Science's fundamental core beliefs, the concept of genetic determinism. We have been led to believe that our genes determine the character of our lives, yet new research surprisingly reveals that it is the character of our lives that controls our genes. Rather than being victims of our heredity, we are actually masters of our genome.

Bruce H. Lipton

Of course our genes will make some capacities very much easier to learn than others, and of course our genes themselves are not learned. But the point remains that genes themselves are not cognitive capacities, and that anything worth calling a cognitive capacity will depend to some degree on learning and so not be innate.

David Papineau

A Quote by Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

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