#mutation

Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria’s effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What’s more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so. ↗

— Michael J. Behe

#chance #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution #macroevolution

That the primary effect of gene mutation may be as simple as the substitution of a single amino acid by another and may lead to profound secondary changes in protein structure and properties has recently been strongly indicated by the work of Ingram on hemoglobin. ↗

— Edward Lawrie Tatum

#amino #amino acid #another #been #changes

Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#borges #counterbook #imaginable-permutations #orbis-tertius #tlön

Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets. ↗

— Francis Crick

#bases #been #changes #composition #data

This seems highly likely, especially as it has been shown that in several systems mutations affecting the same amino acid are extremely near together on the genetic map. ↗

— Francis Crick

#affecting #amino #amino acid #been #especially

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive. ↗

— Lionel Trilling

#aware #been #culture #function #high

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway. ↗

— James Lovelock

#always #any #anyway #engineering #genetic

First of all, many human diseases are influenced by, if not caused by mutations in genes. ↗

— Daniel Nathans

#diseases #first #first of all #genes #human

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains. ↗

— Edward Lawrie Tatum

#better understood #coming #cultures #evolution #mutant

For the first time in history we can track the evolution of a pandemic in real time. Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behaviour. ↗

— Margaret Chan

#evolution #first #first time #history #influenza