A Quote by Sam Kean

Geneticists in the early 1900s believed that nature - in an effort to avoid wasting precious space within chromosomes - would pack as many genes into each chromosome as possible.
For each chromosome contributed by the sperm there is a corresponding chromosome contributed by the egg, there are two chromosomes of each kind, which together constitute a pair.
We have long been seeking a different kind of evolutionary process and have now found one; namely, the change within the pattern of the chromosomes. ... The neo-Darwinian theory of the geneticists is no longer tenable.
In the past, geneticists have looked at so-called disease genes, but a lot of people have changes in their genes and don't get these diseases. There have to be other parts of physiology and genetics that compensate.
All the work on heritability was never based on looking at genes; it was based on the similarity between identical twins or between parents and children. Now that geneticists can look at genes, they can't find genes that account for more than 10 percent of the variation in any human trait.
If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life.
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.
I believed in immaculate conception and spontaneous combustion. I believed in aliens from outer space and vampires, prophecy, and the resurrection of the dead. I had deja vu many times each day. I was thirteen.
The idea that cancer genes are sitting inside each and every one of our chromosomes, just waiting to be corrupted or inactivated and thereby unleashing cancer, is, of course, one of the seminal ideas of oncology.
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate but we are wasting precious time.
I would say being in that institution - that psyche ward, or whatever it was. That was really creepy because it was a real place from like the early 1900s.
Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.
Many of us in the jockeys' room are wasting to ride many pounds below our natural weight, but all the while you are doing that, you also want to ensure that you are as strong as possible so that you can give your mount every possible chance in a race.
Most bodybuilders only have a hazy notion of what they want to look like. They do not say, 'I am going to be a winner.' The negative impulses around the gym can be incredible. I would hear bodybuilders complaining, 'Oh,no! Not another set!' That destroyed them. I have always believed that if you're training for nothing, you're wasting your effort!
Your own beliefs are selecting your genes, and if you don't have the right genes to handle the stress that your in, your belief will rewrite your genes in an effort to do so.
What is difficult to understand is that without conscious effort, nothing is possible. Conscious effort is related to higher nature. My lower nature alone cannot lead me to consciousness. It is blind. But when I wake up and I feel that I belong to a higher world, this is only part of conscious effort. I become truly conscious only when I open to all my possibilities, higher and lower. There is value only in conscious effort.
It is possible to experience an awakening in this life through realising just how precious each moment, each mental process, and each breath truly is.
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