“It is the impulse of science to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it. Recombinant DNA had pushed genetics from the realm of science into the realm of technology. Genes were not abstractions anymore. They… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share
Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“A note of caution: epigenetics is also on the verge of transforming into a dangerous idea. Epigenetic modifications of genes can potentially superpose historical and environmental information on cells and genomes—but this capacity is speculative, limited, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable: a parent with an experience of starvation produces children with obesity and overnourishment, while a father with the experience of tuberculosis,… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share
When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“I had a novice's hunger for history, but also a novice's inability to envision it.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Any extrapolation of history into the future presupposes an environment of static discovery—an oxymoron.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Six decades and two years, no more than a passing glance of time, separate Mendel's initial experiments on peas and the court-mandated sterilization of… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“We now know that cells have ancient detectors that recognize viral genes and stamp them with chemical marks, like cancellation signs, to prevent their… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Familial schizophrenia (like normal human features such as intelligence and temperament) is thus highly heritable but only moderately inheritable. In other words, genes-hereditary determinants-are crucially important to the future development of the disorder. If you possess a particular combination of genes, the chance of developing the illness is extremely high: hence the striking concordance among identical twins. On the other… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share
“If you prefer an “academic life” as a retreat from reality, do not go into biology. This field is for a man or woman… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“But the pigs--seventy pounds of porcine weight that did not take kindly to weekly endoscopies--did not sprout any ulcers. And testing the theory on humans was ethically impossible: how could one justify infecting a human with a new, uncharacterized species of bacteria to prove that it caused gastritis and predisposed to cancer? In July 1984, with his experiments stalled and… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share
“One of the four genes used by Yamanaka to reverse cellular fate is called c-myc. Myc, the rejuvenating factor, is no ordinary gene: it is one of the most forceful regulators of cell growth and metabolism known in biology. Activated abnormally, it can certainly coax an adult cell back into an embryo-like state, thereby enabling Yamanaka's cell-fate reversal experiment (this… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share
A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reorganization of cancer in terms… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
