Mutation Quotes

• Proof that the penis is a much later development than the female vulva is found in the evidence that the male himself was a late mutation from an original female creature. For man is but an imperfect female. Geneticists and physiologists tell us that the Y chromosome that produces males is a deformed and broken X chromosome — the female chromosome. All women have two X chromosomes, while the male has one X derived from his mother and one Y from his father. It seems very logical that this small and twisted Y chromosome is a genetic error — an accident of nature, and that originally there was only one sex — the female.

  

  Elizabeth Gould Davis
  • Father
  • Development
  • Evidence

• As a gender variant visual artist I access 'technologies of gender' in order to amplify rather than erase the hermaphroditic traces of my body. I name myself. A gender abolitionist. A part time gender terrorist. An intentional mutation and intersex by design, (as opposed to diagnosis), in order to distinguish my journey from the thousands of intersex individuals who have had their 'ambiguous' bodies mutilated and disfigured in a misguided attempt at 'normalization'. I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across.

  

  Del LaGrace Volcano
  • Build
  • Gender
  • Individuals

• 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
  • Time
  • Real
  • History

• The unique nature about the influenza virus is its great potential for changes, for mutation.

  

  Margaret Chan
  • Great
  • Nature
  • Unique

• Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome.

  

  Elizabeth Kolbert
  • Creature
  • DNA
  • Genome

• 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
  • Human
  • Because
  • Copies

• I think, with every kind of creature and every kind of human, there is no better. We're all just mutations, and I think that each mutation should be celebrated.

  

  Alejandro Ghersi
  • Creature
  • Celebrated
  • Mutation

• When you get sick with the flu you get infected with flu viruses and they make lots of new flu viruses, but those new viruses are not exact copies of the old ones. They have mutations in them. A lot of those mutations are harmful.

  

  Carl Zimmer
  • Sick
  • Copies
  • Viruses

• There is some research that suggests that viruses like the flu are really actually kind of at the razor's edge when it comes to mutation. They're mutating so fast that if they mutated much faster they would actually develop a lot of harmful mutations that could slow them down and cripple them and eventually literally drive them extinct.

  

  Carl Zimmer
  • Kind
  • Research
  • Faster

• Evolutionary theory, properly understood, does not conflict with the idea that God occasionally intervenes in nature - for example, by once or twice causing a beneficial mutation to occur. Biologists have not detected any such interventions despite the data and theory they have assembled about mutation. However, I think it is a mistake to expect biological experiments to be able to detect such one-off acts of divine intervention, especially if those acts occurred in the distant past. Science isn't in that line of work.

  

  Elliott Sober
  • God
  • Nature
  • Science

• Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal.

  

  Rebecca Skloot
  • Immortal
  • Transformed
  • Genetic

• Heroes, lovers and believers don´t extinguish: they are rediscovered in every age, and in this sense myth always emerges. The situation in which we find ourselves resembles an interlude in which the curtain has fallen whilst a disconcerting mutation of the workers and accessories is taking place.

  

  Ernst Junger
  • Lovers
  • Emerges
  • Mutation

• If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes.

  

  Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • Genes
  • Mutation
  • Oncology

• Anything that has to travel all the way down from your cerebellum to your fingertips, there's a lot of things that can happen on the journey. Sometimes I'll listen to records, my own stuff, and I think god, the original idea for this was so much better than the mutation that we arrived at.

  

  Elvis Costello
  • Travel
  • Idea
  • Records