Biologists From The United States

"The thing we really need to fix is ourselves. It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. So the question is: Will we respond to this or not? I would say that the future of life and the dignity of human beings depends on our doing that."

"Because of the questions posed by Schrödinger and the nature of the problem of identifying and describing the gene itself, the early development of molecular biology relied greatly on scientists who brought insights from physics to biology—Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, George Gamow, Sir Lawrence Bragg, Francis Crick, Max Perutz, John Kendrew, Maurice Wilkins, Desmond Bernal, and Linus Pauling being the best known of these scientists."

"The aesthetic appeal of the DNA double helix initially hindered notions of DNA mutation and repair, which would necessarily interfere with its pristine state. But it has since been recognized that DNA is subject to continuous damage and the cell has an arsenal of ways of responding to such injury. Although mutations or deficiencies in repair can have catastrophic consequences, causing a range of human diseases, mutations are nonetheless fundamental to life and evolution."

"Living cells respond to DNA damage by a variety of mechanisms, including a series of biochemical pathways called DNA repair. These include three discrete pathways for the excision of damaged bases, called base excision repair, mismatch repair and nucleotide excision repair (NER). NER in human cells is a complex biochemical process during which a large multiprotein complex is assembled at several types of base damage. This multiprotein complex (NER machine) catalyses the excision of damaged bases as oligonucleotide fragments."

"There are approximately two billion cells in the nervous system of a human being. The process of thinking in any individual is partly dependent upon the variable arrangement of these cells. Therefore no person can think exactly as another, any more than he can change his facial features to duplicate the facial features of another. If people would remember this fact and regulate their attitudes towards others to conform to it, it would encourage the exercise of tolerance, the human attribute most needed today."

"The world of animal viruses appears to offer an unfathomable diversity of specimens, but, as the molecular biology of the replication of many viruses has been studied, a pattern of behavior has emerged. The viruses can be divided into classes, each of which has its own method of transmitting its genetic information from one generation to the next and its own style of expressing its genetic information. Although in some cases the data are still fragmentary, it is possible to outline the behavior of these systems and to place them in a formal scheme."

"This milestone of biology's megaproject is the long-promised draft DNA sequence from the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (the public project). The sequence itself is available to all those connected to the Internet … In the paper in this issue, we are presented with a description of the strategy used to decipher the structures of the huge DNA molecules that constitute the genome, and with analyses of the content encoded in the genome. It is the achievement of a coordinated effort involving 20 laboratories and hundreds of people around the world. It reflects the scientific community at its best: working collaboratively, pooling its resources and skills, keeping its focus on the goal, and making its results available to all as they were acquired."

"As long as I have been in science, which is let's say 1960 to today, just about every five years there are major changes in technology that allow you to do things that you previously either said were just too hard or there was no way to do them — or which you hadn't imagined that you could ever do."

"Two independent groups of investigators have found evidence of an enzyme in virions of RNA tumour viruses which synthesizes DNA from an RNA template. This discovery, if upheld, will have important implications not only for carcinogenesis by RNA viruses but also for the general understanding of genetic transcription: apparently the classical process of information transfer from DNA to RNA can be inverted."

"‘Help’ to B cells is not a single product of TFH cells and not even a single process. T cell help to B cells can be divided into seven distinct functions, ... : proliferation, survival, plasma cell differentiation, somatic hypermutation, class-switch recombination, adhesion and attraction. These seven different forms of help are all contributors to TFH cell–B cell interactions, and each process consists of multiple pathways ... Furthermore, some molecules have a role in several different forms of help."

"The prominence of Watson and Crick and the Phage Group made Baltimore all the more desperate to do some real experimental biology. During the spring of his junior year, Baltimore became president of the Biology Club and enrolled in a microbiology seminar that discussed the advances of Luria, Delbrück, Lederberg, and others. But he was sick of just talking about biology. He had understood very quickly that designing and completing experiments were the accomplishments that make a biologist; gathering an encyclopedia knowledge of facts simply makes a good student."

"Although T cell help to B cells was one of the very first defined functions of T cells (Crotty, 2015), the identification of the CD4+ T cell subset responsible for T cell-dependent humoral immune responses developed much later. The term T follicular helper (Tfh) cell was coined in a series of studies on human tonsillar germinal center (GC) CD4+ T cells and CXCR5+ CD4+ T cells in blood (Crotty, 2011). Early converts rightly point to those papers as seminal for establishing the field, but it was not until Bcl6 was determined to be a lineage-defining transcription factor (TF) of Tfh cells that Tfh cells were broadly accepted among immunologists as a distinct lineage of helper CD4+ T cells and required for GCs. That trifecta of papers was published 10 years ago (Johnston et al., 2009, Nurieva et al., 2009, Yu et al., 2009), including the demonstration that the TFs Blimp1 and Bcl6 are potent reciprocal antagonists (Johnston et al., 2009) …"

"Tfh cell differentiation is a multistage, multifactorial process. There is no single event that defines Tfh cell differentiation, unlike T helper 1 (Th1) cell differentiation, for instance, which can be fully induced by interleukin-12 (IL-12) exposure in vitro or in vivo. Instead, Tfh cell differentiation is a multistep, multisignal process that also accommodates a significant amount of heterogeneity."

"There are no child prodigies in biology. Future physicists may play with radios or electronics, forcing electrons to flow along wire paths through light bulbs or amplifiers, but there is no comparable pastime for biologists. Nature-watching is no substitute. Simply looking at frogs is no more instructive than looking at a radio: the tinkering is is the important component. Perhaps someday, when molecular biology has reached elementary and secondary schools, promising young biologists will play with molecular biology sets the way chemists and physicists play with chemistry sets and circuit boards. As it is, most young biologists do no experiments before college. Of the few who do, almost all experiment with chemistry sets, only to switch to biology in college when they learn about its experimental possibilities."

"Viral genomes must make mRNA that can be read by host ribosomes ... David Baltimore (Nobel laureate) used this insight to describe a simple way to think about virus genomes ... The original Baltimore scheme missed one genome type: the gapped DNA of the Hepadnaviridae ..."

"T cell help to B cells is a fundamental aspect of adaptive immunity and the generation of immunological memory. Follicular helper CD4 T (TFH) cells are the specialized providers of B cell help. TFH cells depend on expression of the master regulator transcription factor Bcl6. Distinguishing features of TFH cells are the expression of CXCR5, PD-1, SAP (SH2D1A), IL-21, and ICOS, among other molecules, and the absence of Blimp-1 (prdm1). TFH cells are important for the formation of germinal centers. Once germinal centers are formed, TFH cells are needed to maintain them and to regulate germinal center B cell differentiation into plasma cells and memory B cells. This review covers TFH differentiation, TFH functions, and human TFH cells, discussing recent progress and areas of uncertainty or disagreement in the literature, and it debates the developmental relationship between TFH cells and other CD4 T cell subsets (Th1, Th2, Th17, iTreg)."

"The best thing people can do is to stop assuming that insects don’t belong on this planet and that it’s our job to destroy them. Insects have lived on Earth far longer than humans have, in many more different places, and they’ve found at least a million different ways to make a living here—we’re living on their planet, not the other way around. My hope is not that everyone will become an entomologist but that more people will appreciate insects for their amazing diversity and adaptability."

"Scientific knowledge helps people to understand and appreciate the world and all of its complexities; it’s the best insurance against irrational fear."

"I don't expect people to become entomologists or even necessarily to love bugs, but at least to think before reflexively stepping on them. They are just capable of the most amazing things, and many of the things that they do we couldn't survive on this planet without them doing."

"There's still so much we don't know about these creatures. But if glitter worms teach us anything, it's that even in the harshest places there is still wonder and beauty. Times are tough, but never forget the awe and majesty of life on this strange blue planet."

"There are few contemporary reviews of whole-ocean neuston ecosystems. I started with smaller studies on specific animals and worked my way through their references. One reference, in Russian Cyrillic, came up again and again. This made sense. I knew the United States and the U.S.S.R. had both developed extensive oceanographic-research programs after World War II, but each region published in its own language, making overlap difficult. I sat with a librarian for nearly an hour, hunting this study down. Finally, we found it: a 1956 study published in the U.S.S.R., in Russian, by an oceanographer named A. I. Savilov. This led us to another study of his from 1968, mercifully translated into English. Savilov spent his career studying the neuston by conducting extensive surveys all across the Pacific and synthesizing this work into a map of the open-ocean surface ecosystems. Savilov described seven unique neuston meadows in the open ocean, each with its own unique composition of animals. Just as rainforests differ from temperate forests, these neustonic ecosystems are unique."

"The Ocean Cleanup was founded with the vision of clearing the world’s ocean of Plastic. The project’s goals are ambitious, and it plans to launch approximately 60 systems to reduce “the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans by at least 90% by 2040.” It is starting with what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but is already scoping out other targets, too. Even without an environmental-impact assessment, it’s easy to imagine what will happen if the Ocean Cleanup succeeds. Neuston and plastic co-occur: They’re in the exact same spots. Cleaning up 90 percent of the plastic using the current method means potentially destroying 90 percent of the neuston. This reality is built into the project’s design. Plastics mimic the neuston world—it’s buoyant, surface bound, and rubbery. When wind and ocean currents sweep neuston through the project’s barrier, animals such as blue sea dragons will be corralled and confined in a huge trap, their fragile bodies colliding with hard and jagged surfaces. They cannot sink below or swim around. They will be suffocated, crushed, and hauled to landfills. The fact that we don’t have a solid understanding of the neuston ecosystem is even more worrying: We will have very little “before” data to compare the Ocean Cleanup’s impact against."

"The Ocean Cleanup says it wants to protect animals at the ocean’s surface from plastic, but neuston is the ecosystem of the ocean’s surface. There is a reason turtles and sunfish eat floating surface plastic: It looks like neuston. Using these wall-like barriers to collect plastic in spite of the neuston is like clear-cutting a canopy in the name of helping a forest. There is no point in collecting plastic if by the end there is nothing left to conserve."

"There are some mysteries so big that they will take the whole world to solve them."

"Republican lawmakers on the panel for the most part were careful not to attack Bright directly. But Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., slammed Bright for continuing to collect his $285,000 salary while first on sick leave for a spike in blood pressure, and now on vacation as he tries to straighten out his work situation. “You’re too sick to go into work, but you’re well enough to come here while getting paid,” said Mullin. “I have a hard time understanding that.”"

"We need to unleash the voices of the scientists in our public health system in the United States so they can be heard and their guidances need to be listened to."

"I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit. I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science – not politics or cronyism – has to lead the way."

"Lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost. Not only that, we were forced to procure the supplies from other countries without the right quality standards, so even our doctors and nurses in the hospitals today are wearing N95-marked masks from other countries that are not providing the sufficient protection that a US-standard N95 mask would provide them."

"Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to improve our response now, based on science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged. There will be likely a resurgence of Covid-19 this fall that will be greatly compounded by the challenges of seasonal influenza. Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history."

"We need to be truthful with the American people. Americans deserve the truth. The truth must be based on science. We have the world's greatest scientists. Let us lead. Let us speak without fear of retribution. We must listen. Each of us can and must do our part now."

"I believe with proper leadership and collaboration across government, with the best science leading the way, we can devise a comprehensive strategy, we can devise a plan that includes all Americans and help them help us guide us through this pandemic. The window is closing to address this pandemic because we still do not have a standard centralized coordinated plan to take this nation through this response."

"There's no one company that can produce enough for our country or for the world. We need to have a strategy and plan in place now to make sure that we can not only fill that vaccine, make it, distribute it, administer it in a fair and equitable plan. We don't have that yet and it is a significant concern."

"Rep. Butterfield: How could we be struggling to get adequate supplies of simple supplies like swabs? What does this say about the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak? Bright: It says to me, sir, that there is no master coordinated plan on how to respond to this outbreak."

"During the past three decades, plant anatomists have established a number of lines of phylogenetic specializations in the structures of the stele."

"Harry's first publication (in 1951) was a short paper in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club entitled "Interesting weeds in New York City." It was during some of his collecting in the wilderness which is the Bronx that he was accosted by several policemen in a squad car, who demanded what he was doing with his odd vasculum over his shoulder. He explained he was a botanist and he was collecting plants. "You know all these weeds?", asked one the men. Upon being assured that he did, he was asked to join them in the car which drove some distance until they came to an open lot on which there was a flourishing crop. "What is it?" "Marihuana," was the reply. Whereupon one of the officers exploded, "Damn those kids, they told us they were tomatoes.""

"Every time Botany and Zoology fuse, Botany ends up screwed to the wall.""

"The thrill of the scientific hunt is to have an idea whose truth is hitched to predictions that take us to new places to explore, objects to discover, and data to analyze."

"What do billions of years of history mean for our lives today? Answers to fundamental questions we face—about the inner workings of our organs and our place in nature—will come from understanding how our bodies and minds have emerged from parts common to other living creatures. I can imagine few things more beautiful or intellectually profound than finding the basis for our humanity, and remedies for many of the ills we suffer, nestled inside some of the most humble creatures that have ever lived on our planet."

"For thousands of years, mankind considered itself the pinnacle of life’s creation on a planet sitting in the center of the universe. Science changed that perception. Leavitt, Hubble, and others helped us see that we live near the margin of a vast galaxy, in a universe of galaxies, with our planet one of many worlds. Darwin and the biologists had their say too. Our entire species is but one little twig on an enormous tree of life filled with all life on earth. But each discovery that moves us from the center of creation to some obscure corner brings an entirely new relation between us, other species, and the entire universe."

"Humans are a timekeeping species, and much of our history can be traced to the ways we parse the moments of our lives."

"Everything changes when we look at the evidence; what looks impossible actually happened."

"The order of fossils in the world’s rocks is powerful evidence of our connections to the rest of life."

"Just as Darwin’s theory predicted: at the right time, at the right place, we had found intermediates between two apparently different kinds of animals."

"Do the facts of our ancient history mean that humans are not special or unique among living creatures? Of course not. In fact, knowing something about the deep origins of humanity only adds to the remarkable fact of our existence: all of our extraordinary capabilities arose from basic components that evolved in ancient fish and other creatures. From common parts came a very unique construction. We are not separate from the rest of the living world; we are part of it down to our bones and, as we will see shortly, even our genes."

"Take the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the present. Until June, the only organisms were single-celled microbes, such as algae, bacteria, and amoebae. The first animal with a head did not appear until October. The first human appears on December 31. We, like all the animals and plants that have ever lived, are recent crashers at the party of life on earth."

"Our fish ancestors had internal and external nostrils, too, and to nobody’s surprise these are the same fish that have armbones and other features in common with us."

"He provides fascinating inside glimpses of Harvard biology in the age of the Olympians—East, Wheeler, Jeffrey, Sargent, Thaxter, Farlow, Weston, Bailey, and "Chinese" Wilson."

"Professor Ames' lineage was one of power and wealth."

"The orchid flora of the Philippine Archipelago is closely allied to that of Celebs, Java, and the Malay Peninsula. There are no endemic genera. The number of endemic species, on the contrary, is very large, at least six-sevenths of the known ones having been found nowhere else. It is safe to say that approximately ninety per cent of the orchid flora is endemic."

"In southern Florida the orchid flora is more or less confined to the peculiar hammock formations in the Everglades and in the pine woods. In these the species are found on the trees and on the ground, not infrequently around or withing the openings of lime-sinks. Each hammock is apt to have a distinctive flora, and when an orchid is common in one hammock, it may be rare in, or absent from, the next."