Francis Crick Quotes

• 

  The simple fables of the religious of the world have come to seem like tales told to children.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Children, Religion

  Tags in World, Fables

• Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

• We have discovered the secret of life!

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fair, Agreement

• Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Composition, Study, Extensive

• A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Studies, Produced, Ideas

• Do codons overlap? In other words, as we read along the genetic message do we find a base which is a member of two or more codons? It now seems fairly certain that codons do not overlap.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Member, Find

• How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Perfectly, Nothing

• For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the – class as having one too few.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Genetic, Having

• If poly A is added to poly U, to form a double or triple helix, the combination is inactive.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Combination, Added

• If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Foundation, Evidence

• If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Example, Correct, Addition

• It has yet to be shown by direct biochemical methods, as opposed to the indirect genetic evidence mentioned earlier, that the code is indeed a triplet code.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Evidence, Direct

• It now seems very likely that many of the 64 triplets, possibly most of them, may code one amino acid or another, and that in general several distinct triplets may code one amino acid.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Possibly, General

• It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry – which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks – that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Reservations, Striking

• Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in System, Genuine, Related

• It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region of a particular nucleic acid molecule.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Region, Determined

• It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid – usually by DNA, although cetain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Small, Carried, Information

• The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Expect, Meaning, Unfortunate

• It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code.

  Francis Crick

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in General, Appear

Francis Crick (25)

Birth:	8th June, 1916
Death:	28th July, 2004
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Biologist, Scientist

About

Francis Crick was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, most noted for being a co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 with James Watson. He, Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

Related Authors

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• Edwin Conklin
• Richard Lewontin
• George C. Williams
• Lynn Margulis
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• Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov

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