We are embedded in a biological world and related to the organisms around us.

In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.

Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.

Three billion bases of DNA sequence can be put on a single compact disc and one will be able to pull a CD out of one's pocket and say, 'Here is a human being; it's me!'

The human's place in the universe will be set in the scheme of evolution, the product of our biological inheritance.

It's easier to change what you do than people think it is. If you don't change, your field changes around you.

By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.