Chance is hugely significant in biology. In fact, the presence of apparent randomness in so many aspects of biology - from mutations in DNA to the chance involved in that one sperm reaching that one egg that became you - suggests that randomness is useful, even necessary, in very many cases.
In our evolutionary narratives, the organism itself often seems to play a passive role: a powerless victim, almost, of changes to its environment or mutations in its genes.
Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events - some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.
I think, with every kind of creature and every kind of human, there is no better. We're all just mutations, and I think that each mutation should be celebrated.
My idea right from the beginning, I guess, was to dismantle the immune system one gene at a time so we could track the mutations that cause problems.
A mutation can create an alternative form of a phenomenon - a phenotype or trait - and we can learn a lot by seeing this alternative state. Once I saw a mouse with no eyelids. It simply had a membrane over the eyes. I found it fascinating that there is a single gene required for eyelids to develop.
You would think that UV just causes mutations, but it doesn't; you need a gene to be active for it.
In the early '90s, we discovered mutations that could double the normal life span of worms.
First of all, many human diseases are influenced by, if not caused by mutations in genes.
Radiation is one of the important factors in evolution. It causes mutation, and some level of mutation is actually good for evolution.
