Mutation quotes:

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Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random. -- Richard Dawkins
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
A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement. -- Francis Crick
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
The balance of evidence both from the cell-free system and from the study of mutation, suggests that this does not occur at random, and that triplets coding the same amino acid may well be rather similar. -- Francis Crick
Although I insist that God has always had the power to intervene directly in nature to create new forms, I am willing to be per-suaded that He chose not to do so and instead employed secondary natural causes like random mutation and natural selection. -- Phillip E. Johnson
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
Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising -- Robert Smithson
No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution. -- Pierre-Paul Grasse
The unique nature about the influenza virus is its great potential for changes, for mutation. -- Margaret Chan
First of all, many human diseases are influenced by, if not caused by mutations in genes. -- Daniel Nathans
I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway. -- James Lovelock
There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation; the earth, heavens, and whole world is thereunto subject. -- Walter Raleigh
We really ought to give ourselves a collective pat on the back for doing as well as we have in a universe of constant media change and mutation. -- Douglas Coupland
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
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time. -- Bertrand Russell
The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations. -- Carl Sagan
A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here. -- Francis Crick
In the comic-book lore, of course, you mutate post a traumatic event. You must have the mutant gene, but if something traumatic happens to you, usually at puberty, then that mutation manifests itself. -- Gavin Hood
If you're the kind of person who likes numbers and statistics, I'm the long shot - the Lotto Powerball winner. I'm the mutation in the DNA that makes evolution a reality. I am the new black. -- Tracy Morgan
If you know the mother's genome and the father's genome, and you see that the children have some genes that neither parent has, then you know that difference is either a mutation or a processing error. -- Leroy Hood
Evolutionary plasticity can be purchased only at the ruthlessly dear price of continuously sacrificing some individuals to death from unfavourable mutations. Bemoaning this imperfection of nature has, however, no place in a scientific treatment of this subject. -- Theodosius Dobzhansky
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
In agriculture, people have taken wild plants that can't be eaten by people - and turned them into wonderful food sources. And that's because genomes can change, and people working with plants have picked mutations. Mutations are nothing more than genetic changes. -- Nina Fedoroff
The central problem of biological evolution is the nature of mutation, but hitherto the occurrence of this has been wholly refractory and impossible to influence by artificial means, although a control of it might obviously place the process of evolution in our hands. -- Hermann Joseph Muller
In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection--quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology. -- Arthur Koestler
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
Adaption of the human body in space is not yet mastered. As soon as you hit space, you feel your body is going through a period of mutation. There's no blood in your head; you have a hard time swallowing. We're not born to naturally be in space. -- Guy Laliberte
The problem with Ebola is that it makes mistakes while it copies itself. The mistakes are actually good for Ebola because they help Ebola change, and as a result of this, as it jumps from one human body to the next, roughly half the time, it's got a mutation. -- Richard Preston
There's almost no food that isn't genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution. Things change because our planet is subjected to a lot of radiation, which causes DNA damage, which gets repaired, but results in mutations, which create a ready mixture of plants that people can choose from to improve agriculture. -- Nina Fedoroff
The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes. -- Plutarch
It may act as an ancillary factor, but by itself, the mutation in tau doesn't give you Alzheimer's disease. This is not to say the tau is not very important. It may be important in propagating the disorder from one cell to another. But as a causal mechanism, the evidence is strongest for beta amyloid abnormalities. -- Eric Kandel
New Orleans is a glorious mutation -- Anthony Bourdain
It's impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species. -- Richard Goldschmidt
Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal. -- Rebecca Skloot
Engaging it produces an intense force, which in turn produces a mutation in consciousness. You become who you really are ... -- Jean Houston
Subjectivity ceases to exist only when the mutation-like leap is made from subjectivity to objectivity, from individual existence to universal existence. -- Piet Mondrian
Fundamentalism's strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith. -- Alan Aldridge
The differences you perceive between Humans-between groups of Humans-are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments -- Octavia Butler
Much like Down Syndrome, red hair is a genetic mutation, and it occurs when a human has unprotected sex with a clown. -- Daniel Tosh
All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to. -- Marcus Aurelius
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
Sometimes I just think we're not meant to fly halfway around the world in a day. That some kind of mutation is going to happen. -- Andrew Bird
You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation. -- John Green
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
Audio virology is not a metaphor. It is to be taken literally. It maps real processes of mutation, transmission, contagion and memory within music culture. -- Kode9
Nearly every BRCA mutation carrier's main concern is how to avoid the fate of relatives who have had, and possibly died from, breast or ovarian cancer. -- Kristi Funk
If the mutation is partially transmitted to offspring, they too would have the advantage. And over time it might have come to dominate a small breeding group. -- Noam Chomsky
Cancer can no longer be classified according to the organ in which it arises. It has to be characterized in terms of the genetic mutation that exists. -- Laurie Glimcher
If you ever meet a guy and you fall in love with him, but because of some weird genetic mutation he doesn't seem to return the feeling?... Wear that dress. -- Ann Brashares
We are embedded in the great evolutionary story of planet Earth, the spare, elegant process of mutation and selection and bricolage. And this means that we are anything but alone. -- Ursula Goodenough
It is not the conscious changes made in their lives by men and women-a new job, a new town, a divorce-which really shape them...but a long slow mutation of emotion, hidden, all-penetrative... -- Nadine Gordimer
Many words are in a state of mutation, the pronunciation being unsettled even in the best society, a result that must often arise where language is as variable and undetermined as the English. -- James F. Cooper
Julian is bluff and sturdy, royal; he possesses a gracefully muscular, equine beauty so natural it suggests that beauty itself is a fundamental human condition and not a mutation in the general design. -- Michael Cunningham
What, anyway, was he to say? That intelligence could surpass and excel the blind force of evolution, with its emphasis on mutation, struggle and death? That conscious cooperation was more efficient than feral competition? -- Iain M. Banks
Throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect," which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. -- John Green

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