597 Quotes About Biology

Simulating enzymes. They create false biological events. They simulate a virus, a viral attack, thus triggering a reaction from antibodies, though since these have no target, there being no virus to destroy, they turn back against their own source. Let us celebrate this irruption of simulation within biology and wait to see where it will lead.

...'photosynthesis: the plant miracle that daily gives us bread and wine, the oxygen we breathe, and simply sustains all life as we know it.

cell is not a name for a thing but for a type of organization

The very common quality produced in the cell of every living and non-living beings in the universe is to reproduce, except few technical errors

A human foetus, with no more human feeling than an amoeba, enjoys a reverence and legal protection far in excess of those granted to an adult chimpanzee. Yet the chimp feels and thinks and — according to recent experimental evidence — may even be capable of learning a form of human language.

Individual asexual organisms die by mistake - when the run out of something, or when they experience a lethal accident. Sexual organisms are designed to die, preprogrammed to do so. Death serves as a poignant reminder of our limitations and frailties - and of the bond with our ancestors who, in a way, died that we might live.

It was only in practising medicine that I could pursue a serious biological philosophy. Moral speculation was puny compare to moral action.

Some people say that we like wolves because they remind us of our dogs, but it is my assertion that we like our dogs because they actually remind us of our ancestral link with wolves, of the freedom that we still carry dormant, deep in our cells.

I would rather call evolution an "emergence myth" than an origin myth: it's an ongoing, nonlinear story in which past, present, and future all communicate with each other.