James Gleick Quotes

Genes that underlie the capacity to receive, use and transmit information are the evolving properties.

During the decade following the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA, the problem of translation - namely, how genetic information is used to synthesize proteins - was a central topic in molecular biology.

Life is a DNA software system.

Genes are like the story, and DNA is the language that the story is written in.

The river of my title is a river of DNA, a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues

We have come a long way on that old molecule DNA.

I'm fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology.

Genes themselves are made of bits.

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid - usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.

I knew the ribosome was going to be the focus of Nobel prizes. It stands at the crossroads of biology, between the gene and what comes out of the gene. But I had convinced myself I was not going to be a winner.

DNA is the master blueprint for life and constitutes the genetic material in all free-living organisms and most viruses. RNA is the genetic material of certain viruses, but it is also found in all living cells, where it plays an important role in certain processes such as the making of proteins.

In this atmosphere I soon became interested in nucleic acids.

DNA, like a tape recording, carries a message in which there are specific instructions for a job to be done.

Much of modern molecular biology and microbiology has been based on the effort to decipher the basic code of life, which is made up of four nucleotides: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.

Nucleic acids are the main information-carrying molecules of the cell, and, by directing the process of protein synthesis, they determine the inherited characteristics of every living thing. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA).

The genome was once thought to be just the blueprint for a living organism, like a combination of the architect's plan for a building and the builder's list of supplies. It specified the parts, the building blocks, and, somehow, the design of the whole, the way in which they are to be put together.

I would only once have the opportunity to let my scientific career encompass a path from the double helix to the three billion steps of the human genome.

It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.

Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.

April 25th is DNA Day. I know, you probably had no idea.

Our understanding of how DNA informs our health and development is advancing at an incredible pace.

Genes are effectively one-dimensional. If you write down the sequence of A, C, G and T, that's kind of what you need to know about that gene. But proteins are three-dimensional. They have to be because we are three-dimensional, and we're made of those proteins. Otherwise we'd all sort of be linear, unimaginably weird creatures.

We used to think that our destiny is in the stars. Now we know that its in our genes, in our DNA.

… the policy of genes