DNA Quote: Dr. John Setaro

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted March 7, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

“There is no genetic shortcoming which cannot be overcome, and no genetic advantage which, if done correctly, cannot be squandered.”

~Dr. John Setaro, Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at Yale University

via Gene Sherpas

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DNA Excerpt: Carly Fiorina

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 29, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From Tough Choices: A Memoir by Carly Fiorina:

The goal was not for Hewlett-Packard to take over Compaq, as Compaq had done with DEC and Tandem. The goal was to use the best of both companies to build something stronger and better. We would use the best of both product lines, both management teams, and both cultures. We needed the DNA of both companies to form a new company that could compete and win in the twenty-first century. We needed two strands of DNA to adapt to the changing industry landscape.

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DNA Excerpt: Diana Gabaldon’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 22, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

…Before he could explain his errand, Mrs. Bug had sat him down with a bowl of his own, a jug of honey, a plate of savory fried bacon, hot toast dripping butter, and a fresh cup of something dark and fragrant that looked like coffee. Jem was next to him, already smeared with honey and buttered to the ears. For a traitorous instant, he wondered whether Brianna was perhaps a bit of a sluggard, though certainly never a slattern.

Then he glanced across the table at Claire [Brianna's mother], uncombed hair standing on end as she blinked sleepily at him over the toast, and generously concluded that it probably wasn’t a conscious choice on Bree’s part, but rather the influence of genetics.

~A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

This book is part of the Outlander series featuring Claire who is a time traveler flitting between the 1940’s and 1770’s. The books are set in Western Europe and Colonial America. I can imagine many amateur genealogists would love to be able to time travel and sneak a peek at their ancestors while gathering some DNA samples. Just be careful not to be mistaken for a witch!

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DNA Quote: Genetic Anthropologist Spencer Wells

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 15, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From a conversation between writer Will Self and genetic anthropologist Spencer Wells published at Seed:

Spencer Wells: I think there’s something inherent in humans that, yes, makes us want to migrate, but also to have that connection to place, even though we’re moving. I think there is something of a wanderlust in our DNA, something that makes us want to explore a little bit further, but at the same time we want to actually be in the place. The way we travel today, you’re not in the place. There’s never any “there” there.

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DNA Quote: Kevin Kelly

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 8, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From Kevin Kelly’s essay, Better Than Free:

Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won’t be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it — the manual for your genes so to speak — will be expensive.

Kind of what I said – Drug Companies Should Offer Free DNA Tests.

(HT: Ryan)

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Books About DNA: Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of the Telomeres

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted January 25, 2008 in Books About DNA, DNA Quotes and Excerpts

…her [Elizabeth Blackburn's] delight in books exceeded the bounds of obedient studiousness – in particular, she was thrilled by her recent discovery of a biology text complete with detailed illustrations of amino acids, strung together in long chains and then folded up into complex three-dimensional shapes to form enzymes and other proteins. For Liz, these elegant structures had a teasing beauty, promising tantalizing clues to the processes of life and yet also enfolding that mystery. Even the names of the amino acids–phenylanine, leucine–struck her as poetic. Though she confessed her fascination to no one, she traced drawings of amino acids on large, thin sheets of white paper and then tacked them up on her bedroom wall.

From Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA by Catherine Brady

Tags: telomeres, elizabeth blackburn, genetics, genes, dna, science, books, scientists

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DNA Excerpt: Reading in Our Genes

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted January 18, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From Twilight of the Books by Caleb Crain in The New Yorker:

Taking the long view, it’s not the neglect of reading that has to be explained but the fact that we read at all. “The act of reading is not natural,” Maryanne Wolf writes in “Proust and the Squid” (Harper; $25.95), an account of the history and biology of reading. Humans started reading far too recently for any of our genes to code for it specifically. We can do it only because the brain’s plasticity enables the repurposing of circuitry that originally evolved for other tasks—distinguishing at a glance a garter snake from a haricot vert, say.

Tags: reading, genetics, genes, dna, books

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DNA Quote: Gwyneth Paltrow on “Evil Genes”

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted January 11, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

Gwyneth Paltrow at a cancer conference in 2007:

I am challenging these evil genes by natural means. I am convinced that by eating biological foods it is possible to avoid tumours.

Rebuttal from Ursula Areans of the British Dietetic Association:

Diet cannot prevent cancer. It is reasonable that the risks of some of them can be reduced with certain diets, but some cancers, alas, show no link to dietary factors.

via The Guardian

Tags: genetics, genes, dna, gwyneth paltrow, cancer

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DNA Quote: Stewart Brand on Genetically Modified Food

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted January 4, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts, Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms

Good old stuff sucks. Sticking with the fine old whatevers is like wearing 100% cotton in the mountains; it’s just stupid.

Give me 100% not-cotton clothing, genetically modified food (from a farmers’ market, preferably), this-year’s laptop, cutting-edge dentistry and drugs.

~Stewart Brand in response to the Edge 2008 Question – What have you changed your mind about?

Tags: genetics, genes, gm food, genetically modified food, stewart brand, dna

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DNA Quote: May Contain Nuts by John O’Farrell

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted December 14, 2007 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

It was the first really hot weekend of the summer, when millions of Londoners are spontaneously drawn by some genetic migration instinct that sees us all jump into the Land Rover and seek out the lush greenery of the natural world that lies beside the garden centre car park.

~May Contain Nuts by John O’Farrell

I can attest to this observation. At the first tiny jump in the thermometer each Spring, Londoners put on their spaghetti strap dresses, tube tops, shorts, flip flops, or even worse, go TOPLESS and swarm the city sidewalks. Letting it all hangout on parade at 20 degrees C.

Tags: genetics, genes, dna, quotes, excerpts, books, john o’farrell, london, summer

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