Francis Crick - Genetic Quotes

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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
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.

Francis Crick
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
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.

Francis Crick
My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists': If you want to understand function, study structure, I was supposed to have said in my molecular biology days. (I believe I was sailing at the time.) I think that one should approach these problems at all levels, as was done in molecular biology. Classical genetics is, after all, a black-box subject. The important thing was to combine it with biochemistry. In nature hybrid species are usually sterile, but in science the reverse is often true. Hybrid subjects are often astonishingly fertile, whereas if a scientific discipline remains too pure it usually wilts.

Francis Crick