Bruce Beutler Quotes

United States, Immunologist
November 29, 1957

Bruce Alan Beutler (born December 29, 1957) is an American immunologist and geneticist. Together with Jules A. Hoffmann, he received one-half of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for "their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity" (the other half went to Ralph M. Steinman for "his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity"). Beutler is currently Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

Also known as Geneticist

People may have said that without symptoms, you can't transmit Ebola. I'm not sure about that being 100 percent true. There's a lot of variation with viruses.

Bruce Beutler
- People
- May
- True
I grew up hoping that my father might win a Nobel Prize.

Bruce Beutler
- Up
- Father

Science is far from the center of the world for most people: even for many with highly sophisticated tastes, interests, and accomplishments.

Bruce Beutler
- People
- World
- Science
If you really want to isolate a disease, then you have to isolate the people who carry it.

Bruce Beutler
- People
A mutation can create an alternative form of a phenomenon - a phenotype or trait - and we can learn a lot by seeing this alternative state. Once I saw a mouse with no eyelids. It simply had a membrane over the eyes. I found it fascinating that there is a single gene required for eyelids to develop.

Bruce Beutler
- Single
- Eyes
The nicest part of the prize, perhaps, is the effect on my friends and family. Each of them feels proud and happy to have the relationship with me that they do. In a way, it's as though they received an award too, and I like that very much.

Bruce Beutler
- Family
- Friends
- Happy
Autoimmunity is probably the next frontier. The majority of cases of autoimmune disease result from a complex genetic problem that has environmental influences. It is a colossal task for the immune system to maintain tolerance to self and yet be ready to react to everything in the world around us.

Bruce Beutler
- World
- Tolerance
My idea right from the beginning, I guess, was to dismantle the immune system one gene at a time so we could track the mutations that cause problems.

Bruce Beutler
- Time
- Beginning

If we think of the immune system as a machine, then we are far from even knowing all of its parts.

Bruce Beutler
In college, I had an early introduction to classical genetics from Professor Dan Lindsley, also an extraordinary teacher who influenced me greatly.

Bruce Beutler
- College
- Teacher
Chance leads to discoveries, and mutagenesis is a way to enhance one's chances of finding a surprise. Often it is the exceptional observations that lead to advances; once you understand exceptions, you understand the whole picture.

Bruce Beutler
- Picture
I felt I ought not to be wasting time, and I hurried to graduate from high school to enroll at UCSD. I also hurried to finish college, to go on to higher studies. By the time I was in my teens, I had a strong sense of mission, wanting to discover something important or solve a major problem in biology or medicine.

Bruce Beutler
- Time
- Important
- School