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 CRICKA 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.
More Francis Crick Quotes
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We are sometimes asked what the result would be if we put four +’s in one gene. To answer this my colleagues have recently put together not merely four but six +’s.
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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.
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Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs.
FRANCIS CRICK -
Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick.
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Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
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Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.
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Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.
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God is a hacker, not an engineer.
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There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.
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You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
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Evolution is cleverer than you are.
FRANCIS CRICK -
There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.
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My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists’: “If you want to understand function, study structure”.
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It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.
FRANCIS CRICK -
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 -
A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong.
FRANCIS CRICK -
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.
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Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don’t be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.
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In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.
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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 -
A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.
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In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death.
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When you start in science, you are brainwashed into believing how careful you must be, and how difficult it is to discover things. There’s something that might be called the ‘graduate student syndrome’; graduate students hardly believe they can make a discovery.
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The balance of evidence both from the cell-free system and from the study of mutation, suggests that this does not occur at random, and that triplets coding the same amino acid may well be rather similar.
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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 -
A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
FRANCIS CRICK