#mutation

I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen. ↗

— Timothy Leary

#freedom #freemen #music #mutant #mutation

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#ask #comes #freedom #goods #life

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement. ↗

— Francis Crick

#agreement #amino #amino acid #between #changes

In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes. ↗

— Michael J. Behe

#chance #darwinism #evolution #id #intelligent-design

It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#mutation #natural-selection #nature

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

#evolution #first #first time #history #influenza

Real arms races are run by highly intelligent, bespectacled engineers in glass offices thoughtfully designing shiny weapons on modern computers. But there's no thinking in the mud and cold of nature's trenches. At best, weapons thrown together amidst the explosions and confusion of smoky battlefields are tiny variations on old ones, held together by chewing gum. If they don't work, then something else is thrown at the enemy, including the kitchen sink - there's nothing "progressive" about that. At its usual worst, trench warfare is fought by attrition. If the enemy can be stopped or slowed by burning your own bridges and bombing your own radio towers and oil refineries, then away they go. Darwinian trench warfare does not lead to progress - it leads back to the Stone Age. ↗

— Michael J. Behe

#biology #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution #macroevolution

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. ↗

— Michael J. Behe

#chance #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution #macroevolution

Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#because #becomes #language #monumental #mutations

That the primary effect of gene mutation may be as simple as the substitution of a single amino acid by another and may lead to profound secondary changes in protein structure and properties has recently been strongly indicated by the work of Ingram on hemoglobin. ↗

— Edward Lawrie Tatum

#amino #amino acid #another #been #changes