“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”
― The Road Ahead
― The Road Ahead
“In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.”
― The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus
― The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus
“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
― Cosmos
― Cosmos
“The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.”
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“Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria’s effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What’s more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so.”
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Lisa’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lisa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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