Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view.

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.

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

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

We know specific genes are turned on in specific cells, but we don't know to what extent this happens.

Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.