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 CRICKFor 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.
More Francis Crick Quotes
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If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.
FRANCIS CRICK -
The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.
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Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.
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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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Exploratory research is really like working in a fog. You don’t know where you’re going. You’re just groping. Then people learn about it afterwards and think how straightforward it was.
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Evolution is cleverer than you are.
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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.
FRANCIS CRICK -
Anybody who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help.
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It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid – usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.
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An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.
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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.
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It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.
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There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.
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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.
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The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
FRANCIS CRICK