While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain.

Animal rights activists talk about cruelty and torture, some backing their assertions by publishing out-of-date photographs of "experiments" banned long ago. This is a misrepresentation. The work we do is performed with compassion, care, humanity and humility. I have never seen an animal suffer pain.

I don't believe the fertilised egg can be equated with the sort of human life that you and I represent, or our children represent.

That Britain today is a liberal society is largely because of the philosophy and outlook of the Anglican Church, which did so much to shape our core values in the past few centuries.

It's extraordinary to think that if you walked into a room and said you had never heard of Hamlet, you would be regarded as a Philistine. But you could walk into the same room and say, 'I don't know what a proton is,' and people would just laugh and say, 'Why should you know?'

It is time my colleagues got real. All British universities doing worthwhile research use animals, and, instead of hiding, they should be boasting of their achievements.

I think that good parenting should allow children to be children. That naivety and slightly open way of looking at the world is very valuable.