Venki Ramakrishnan > Quotes

“When we have a clear goal in mind, we think we are struggling to reach a summit. But there is no summit. When we get there, we realize we have just climbed a foothill, and there is an endless series of mountains ahead still to be climbed.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome

“What causes Alzheimer’s disease is a burning question because that holds the key to preventing it. The answer depends on how you define cause. The immediate cause may well be the formation of tau or amyloid-beta filaments in the brain. However, an earlier and root cause is the cell’s inability to manage the excess of unfolded proteins that aggregate to form these filaments”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

“At age 25, our probability of dying in the next year is only about 0.1 percent. This rises to 1 percent at age 60, 6 percent at age eighty, and 16 percent at age 100. By the time a person reaches 108 years old, there is only about a 50 percent chance of making it another year.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

“the disposable soma hypothesis posits that an organism with limited resources must apportion them between investing in early growth and reproduction and prolonging life by continuously repairing wear and tear in the cell.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

“Philosopher Stephen Cave argues that the quest for immortality has driven human civilization for centuries. He classifies our coping strategies into four plans. The first, or Plan A, is simply to try to live forever or as long as possible. If that fails, then Plan B is to be reborn physically after you die. In Plan C, even if our body decays and cannot be resurrected, our essence continues as an immortal soul. And finally, Plan D means living on through our legacy, whether that consists of works and monuments or biological offspring.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Longevity

“our brains appear to have evolved a protection mechanism by thinking of death as something that happens to other people, not ourselves.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Longevity

“This in turn is caused by damage to our control systems: the quality control and recycling machinery of the cell that we discussed earlier in the chapter. And that damage to our control systems is a result of aging.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

“Among the most important information that genes contain is how to make proteins.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

“What causes Alzheimer’s disease is a burning question because that holds the key to preventing it. The answer depends on how you define cause. The immediate cause may well be the formation of tau or amyloid-beta filaments in the brain. However, an earlier and root cause is the cell’s inability to manage the excess of unfolded proteins that aggregate to form these filaments in the first place. This in turn is caused by damage to our control systems: the quality control and recycling machinery of the cell that we discussed earlier in the chapter. And that damage to our control systems is a result of aging.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

“Even if it is difficult to use DNA repair to directly improve longevity, our knowledge of it underpins our understanding of virtually every process of aging. Genes ultimately control the entire process of life: when and how much of each protein we make; whether our cells continue to live or suddenly stop dividing; how well our cells sense nutrients in their surroundings and respond to them; and how different molecules and cells communicate with one another. Genes control our immune system, which must maintain the delicate balance of reacting to invading pathogens without inducing chronic inflammation.
Direct damage to our DNA, and the cell’s seemingly paradoxical response to it, is only one of the ways our genetic program can be changed as to cause aging. For our DNA has two peculiarities. The first is that its end segments are special and protected, and the consequences of disrupting them are serious.”
― Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality