Synapsing Of Chromosomes Quotes

This is the mitochondrial DNA." Bowers nodded back to the cryo-case. "It's the genetic material that actually makes the energy that powers our cells. Think of it like this. Each of our cells has the usual 23 pairs of chromosomes that make us human and determine our physical appearance, how we fight off disease, and other physical characteristics. Now think of the mitochondria as little organisms within our cells. Like cells within a cell. It's those little organisms that make energy for our cells. And they have their own DNA." "I ~ Jonathan Brookes

Let the chromosomes be represented by the keyboard of a grand piano-a very grand piano with thousands of keys. Then each key will be a gene. Every cell in the body carries a microscopic but complete keyboard in its nucleus. But each specialised cell is only permitted to sound one chord, according to its specialty-the rest of its genetic keyboard has been inactivated by scotch tape. The fertilised egg, and the first few generations of its daughter cells, had the complete keyboard at their disposal. But succesive generations have, at each 'point of no return', larger and larger areas of it covered by scotch tape. In the end, a muscle cell can only do one thing: contract-strike a single chord.

The scotch tape is known in the language of genetics as the 'repressor'. The agent which strikes the key and activates the gene is an 'inducer'. A mutated gene is a key which has gone out of tune. When quite a lot of key have gone quite a lot out of tune, the result, we were asked to believe, was a much improved, wonderful new melody- a reptile transformed into a bird, or a monkey into a man. It seems that at some point the theory must have gone wrong.

The point where it went wrong was the atomistic concept of the gene. ~ Arthur Koestler

I tried all kinds of approaches: sexy, friendly, intimidating - nothing worked. I'm starting to think there's an invisible force field that prevents honest communication between X and Y chromosomes. ~ Jody Gehrman

Soon after Harris's HeLa-chicken study, a pair of researchers at New York University discovered that human-mouse hybrids lost their human chromosomes over time, leaving only the mouse chromosomes. This allowed scientists to begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes by tracking the order in which genetic traits vanished. If a chromosome disappeared and production of a certain enzyme stopped, researchers knew the gene for that enzyme must be on the most recently vanished chromosome. Scientists in laboratories throughout North America and Europe began fusing cells and using them to map genetic traits to specific chromosomes, creating a precursor to the human genome map we have today. ~ Rebecca Skloot

Yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. ~ James Hillman

This is a strange book: visionary and dark. It stutters out a kind of music: repeated phrases which accumulate errors and mutate as they go like chromosomes or, as Woodward puts it better, 'visible fissile ribbons.' It's as if we were present for the moments of creation and extinction. Uncanny Valley is ominous and beautiful. ~ Rae Armantrout

For it is not cell nuclei, not even individual chromosomes, but certain parts of certain chromosomes from certain cells that must be isolated and collected in enormous quantities for analysis; that would be the precondition for placing the chemist in such a position as would allow him to analyse [the hereditary material] more minutely than [can] the morphologists ... For the morphology of the nucleus has reference at the very least to the gearing of the clock, but at best the chemistry of the nucleus refers only to the metal from which the gears are formed. ~ Theodor Boveri

Each part of our genome is unique. We would not be alive if there was not a single mathematical solution for our chromosomes. We would just be scrambled goo. ~ Craig Venter

They also knew that there was a string of DNA at the end of each chromosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they're almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer times our cells have left to divide before they die. By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa's immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta's chromosomes so they never grew old and never died. ~ Rebecca Skloot

Corrective surgery is referred to as genital reassignment, or reconstruction, surgery (GRS). In the past, it was referred to as sex reassignment surgery (SRS), but this term is not technically accurate. As we've learned, sex is a combination of chromosomes, reproductive systems, and genitals. Corrective surgery for a transgender person doesn't change the sex chromosomes; therefore it is properly known as GRS. ~ Kathy Baldock

Bina and Landsman were twisted together, a braided pair of chromosomes with a mystery flaw. And now? Now each of them pretends not to see the other and looks away.
Landsman looks away. ~ Michael Chabon

While some male "admirers" of trans women tend to fetishize us for our femininity or our imagined sexual submissiveness, I find trans women hot because we are anything but docile or demure. In order to survive as a trans woman, you must be, by definition, impervious, unflinching, and tenacious. In a culture in which femaleness and femininity are on the receiving end of a seemingly endless smear campaign, there is no act more brave - especially for someone assigned a male sex at birth - than embracing one's femme self.

And unlike those male tranny-chasers who say that they like "T-girls" because we are supposedly "the best of both worlds", I am attracted to trans women because we are all woman! My femaleness is so intense that it has overpowered the trillions of lameass Y chromosomes that sheepishly hide inside the cells of my body. And my femininity is so relentless that it has survived over thirty years of male socialisation and twenty years of testosterone poisoning. Some kinky-identified thrill-seekers may envision trans women as androgyne fuck fantasies, but that's only because they are too self-absorbed to appreciate how completely fucking female we are. ~ Julia Serano

We have long been seeking a different kind of evolutionary process and have now found one; namely, the change within the pattern of the chromosomes ... The neo-Darwinian theory of the geneticists is no longer tenable. ~ Richard Goldschmidt

I imagine the field day we'd have with this in gender studies class. Our desks in a circle, we'd huddle forward and rant: So this is the baseline of femininity. The place where being bestowed certain chromosomes will ultimately take you. This is the dream that's been pounded into us. Find the guy. Find the dress. Or hell, maybe the other way around. The Disney Princesses told us so. But this isn't college. This is my job. ~ Anne Wagener

I may finally call attention to the probability that the association of paternal and maternal chromosomes in pairs and their subsequent separation during the reducing division as indicated above may constitute the physical basis of the Mendelian law of heredity. ~ Walter S. Sutton

In 2002 scientists demonstrated beautifully just how random the process of X inactivation really is, by cloning a calico cat. They took cells from an adult female cat, and carried out the standard (but still fiendishly tricky) process of cloning. To do this, they removed the nucleus from the adult cat cell and put it into a cat egg whose own chromosomes they'd removed. This egg was implanted into a surrogate cat mother, and a lively and beautiful female kitten was born. And she didn't look anything like the genetically identical cat of which she was a clone.18 ~ Nessa Carey

Failure was a luxury we couldn't afford, all chained together as we were, our fates locked up tight. One box office flop from a female director and no one wanted "girl" movies, one stock market plunge from a company with a woman CEO and women couldn't lead, one false accusation and we were liars, all of us. Because when we failed it was because of our chromosomes, it wasn't because of a market dip or an ineffective advertising campaign or plain bad luck. ~ Chandler Baker

In my lab, we're finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres. ~ Elizabeth Blackburn

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying. ~ Elizabeth Blackburn

Why do you not believe you're the father?" "Because elves and humans can no' procreate." As an afterthought, in the interest of clarity, he added, "With each other. It's a biological fact not up to interpretation. The chromosomes do no' line up." Monq barked out a laugh that clearly offended Ram. "And what could you be findin' amusin' about this… situation?" "She's an elf, you idiot! Her DNA is 99.9% the same as yours. The .01% difference is that her ears are not pointed." While Ram stood there with his mouth open, trying to absorb that astonishing news, Elora turned to Monq with a hint of menace. "And you didn't think this was information you should pass along?" "First, is it my job to keep up on gossip and know that the two of you are an item? No. Second, aren't elves supposed to recognize each other as mates? That didn't happen in your case?" Slowly a grin spread over his face. "Aye. 'Tis exactly what did happen. Great Paddy! We're havin' a baby. I need to call my mother. ~ Victoria Danann

When I think that I'm over you
I'm overpowered

Your date on my data
The chromosomes match
Exact as in matter
A matter of fact

These amourant feelings
A cognitive state
Need the love object
To reciprocate

When I think that I'm over you
I'm overpowered
It's long overdue
I'm overpowered

When I think that I'm over you
I'm overpowered
It's long overdue
I'm overpowered

A chemical reason
If reason's your game
A chemical needing
Is there in the brain

With preprogrammed meanings
Like a little more pep
Alien feelings
We have to accept

When I think that I'm over you
I'm overpowered
It's long overdue
I'm overpowered

When I think that I'm over you
I'm overpowered
It's long overdue
I'm overpowered

As science struggles on to try to explain
Oxytoxins flowing ever into my brain

As science struggles on to try to explain
Oxytoxins flowing ever into my brain ~ Roisin Murphy

It's not just humans who have trisomies of the sex chromosomes. One day you may be happily amazing your friends with your confident statement that their tortoiseshell cat is female when they deflate you by telling you that their pet has been sexed by the vet and is actually a Tom. At this point, smile smugly and then say 'Oh, in that case he's karyotypically abnormal. He has an XXY karyotype, rather than XY'. And if you're feeling particularly mean, you can tell them that Tom is infertile. That should shut them up. ~ Nessa Carey

Except for the rare cases of plastid inheritance, the inheritance of all known cofactors can be sufficiently accounted for by the presence of genes in the chromosomes. In a word the cytoplasm may be ignored genetically. ~ Thomas Hunt Morgan

It would be easy to attribute Layla's effect on the opposite sex (and the occasional Sapphically inclined female) to her youth or sweet, natural perfume, but the real reason behind her attraction was far more complex. Of course, there was no denying her beauty, the consistency of her angled, porcelain features, that tilt in her almond eyes, which shined like half-moons across her celestial face. Unlike her two older sisters, who sported wayward brown ringlets, Layla had hair that was long and jet black. Tied up or let down, moussed or gelled, nothing could excite her stubbornly straight locks. They were a definite throwback to some latent Oriental chromosomes roaming deep inside of her. ~ Marsha Mehran

It seems a miracle that young children easily learn the language of any environment into which they were born. The generative approach to grammar, pioneered by Chomsky, argues that this is only explicable if certain deep, universal features of this competence are innate characteristics of the human brain. Biologically speaking, this hypothesis of an inheritable capability to learn any language means that it must somehow be encoded in the DNA of our chromosomes. Should this hypothesis one day be verified, then lingusitics would become a branch of biology. ~ Niels Kaj Jerne

Believers in chaos-and they sometimes call themselves believers, or converts, or evangelists-speculate about determinism and free will, about evolution, about the nature of conscious intelligence. They feel that they are turning back a trend in science toward reductionism, the analysis of systems in terms of their constituent parts: quarks, chromosomes, or neurons. They believe that they are looking for the whole. ~ James Gleick

For each chromosome contributed by the sperm there is a corresponding chromosome contributed by the egg, there are two chromosomes of each kind, which together constitute a pair. ~ Thomas Hunt Morgan

Acknowledging that my biological imperative may not include the drive to procreate, that I just might be attracted to XX chromosomes instead of XY? That's so stupid-minor in comparison to the fact that I might actually be in love for the first time in my life. It's with a girl...so what? Lesbian, bisexual, whatever! Thus isn't about categorisation or chromosomes. This is about how I feel about another person. ~ Kristen Zimmer

The test of whether or not you can hold a job should not be in the arrangement of your chromosomes ~ Bella Abzug

Is that dog shit on the bottom of your shoe?'
I sat up a fraction. 'What?'
'Is that dog shit on the bottom of your shoe?'
'I don't know, the lab report's not back yet,' I replied drily.
'I'm serious, is that dog shit?'
'How should I know?'
Katz leaned far enough forward to give it a good look and a cautious sniff. 'It is dog shit,' he announced with an odd tone of satisfaction.
'Well, keep quiet about it or everybody'll want some.'
'Go and clean it off, will ya? It's making me nauseous.'
And here the bickering started, in intense little whispers.
'You go and clean it off.'
'It's your shoes.'
'Well, I kind of like it. Besides, it kills the smell of this guy next to me.'
'Well, it's making me nauseous.'
'Well, I don't give a shit.'
'Well, I think you're a fuck-head.'
'Oh, you do, do you?'
'Yes, as a matter of fact. You've been a fuck-head since Austria.'
'Well, you've been a fuck-head since birth.'
'Me?' A wounded look. 'That's rich. You were a fuck-head in the womb, Bryson. You've got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and fuck-head. ~ Bill Bryson

If one more person tells me that "all gender is performance," I think I am going to strangle them. Perhaps most annoying about that sound-bite is the somewhat snooty "I-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-youdidn't" sort of way in which it is most often recited, a magnificent irony given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification, as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if there's one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, it's that gender is a confusing and complicated mess. It's like a junior high school mixer, where our bodies and our internal desires awkwardly dance with one another, and with all the external expectations that other people place on us.

Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But performance doesn't explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn't capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen. Performance doesn't even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other pe ~ Julia Serano

Unlike some other immune-system gene families, whose genes are all clustered together on one chromosome, the 10 human TLR genes are distributed between five chromosomes. This reflects the ancient, invertebrate origin of the Toll-like receptors, which were present before the two genome-wide duplications that occurred during the early evolution of the vertebrates around 500 million years ago. On the basis of sequence similarities, the Toll-like receptors form four evolutionary lineages (I, II, III, and IV) that are descendants of the four Toll-like receptor loci formed by these two ancient genome duplications. ~ Peter Parham

If I could put my finger on it, I'd bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it - the climate, the smells. It's the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there's an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here. ~ John Goodman

Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed ... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity. ~ Ronan O'Rahilly

If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them. ~ Elizabeth Blackburn

The McEvoys, for their part, apparently had two dominant founding Y chromosomes, a theory that is supported by records revealing that when the name was anglicized, two ancient families, the Mac Fhiodhbhuidhes and the Mac an Bheathas, were drawn in under the same banner and both became McEvoys. History also indicates that fully three Irish surnames - McGuiness, Neeson, and McCreesh - are all anglicizations of the same Gaelic name Mac Aonghusa (son of Angus), which DNA evidence confirms, as all three groups overlap strongly on one Y. ~ Christine Kenneally

The egg of every species of animal or plant carries a definite number of bodies called chromosomes. The sperm carries the same number. Consequently, when the sperm unites with the egg, the fertilized egg will contain the double number of chromosomes. ~ Thomas Hunt Morgan

The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that has an incomplete set of chromosomes ... ~ Valerie Solanas

Jenny Boylan might be the one person in this world whom I now think of purely as a human being, free of all the corporeal baggage of chromosomes, hormones, and footwear. ~ Tim Kreider

THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds. ~ Janet Evanovich

I am a breast. A Phenomenon that has been vastly described to me as "a massive hormonal influx, "a endocrinopathic catastrophe" and/or "a hermaphroditic explosion of chromosomes" took place within my body between midnight and 4 A.M. on February 18, 1971, and converted me into a mammary gland disconnected from any human form. ~ Philip Roth

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare, no matter how conservative your decision making, no matter how few Y chromosomes are along on your trip, you can still find yourself in a mud slide or a hurricane without a dry piece of clothing to your name. But those of us who have given our time and usually our hearts to outdoorsmen over the years know that, for many of them, it's not really a wilderness trip unless, MacGyver-like, they have to make a fire out of a pair of shorts, a glow stick, and a ketchup bottle; it's not really an adventure until someone gets airlifted out. ~ Pam Houston