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It's often meaningless to talk about a genetic trait without also discussing the environment in which that trait appears. Sometimes, genes don't work at all until the environment awakens them.

People think genes are an absolute cause of traits. But the notion that the genome is the blueprint for humanity is a very bad metaphor. If you think we're hard-wired and deterministic, there should indeed be a lot more genes.

Every cell in your body contains the same genetic information.

The problem with existing biology is you change only one or two genes at a time.

The truth, it is said, is rarely pure or simple, yet genetics can at times seem seductively transparent.

Genes can't possibly explain all of what makes us what we are.

Genes don't mean necessarily that you have got a certain strand of gene that makes you particularly acceptable as a public official.

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

For each gene in your genome, you quite often get a different version of that gene from your father and a different version from your mother. We need to study these relationships across a very large number of people.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.