Perhaps arising from a fascination with animals, biology seemed the most interesting of sciences to me as a child.
Interpretation
The speaker developed a deep interest in biology from a young age, inspired by a love for animals.
In this quote, Elizabeth Blackburn reflects on her childhood fascination with animals that led her to find biology as a captivating field of study. This highlights how early passions can shape our career choices and interests, showcasing the natural curiosity that influences our journey in life and science.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about career paths, you could share this quote to illustrate how childhood interests can influence adult choices.
Cancer cells have had so many other things go wrong with them, genetic, non-genetic changes, that those cells, one of the things they then get selected for is that they have lots of telomerase because now the telomeres in those cells get maintained.
We and other groups are seeing clear statistical links between telomere shortness and risk for a variety of diseases that are becoming very common, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers.
Checking your telomere length is a bit like weighing yourself: you get this single number which depends on a lot of factors. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health.
We think there are lifestyle factors that boost telomerase naturally.
For me, arguably the story of telomeres and telomerase began thousands of years ago, in the cornfields of the Maya highlands of Central America.
If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.
As a physicist, I've always found cosmology to be a rational elixir; it distances me from ordinary concerns.
When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It's like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?
The existence of these patterns [fractals] challenges us to study forms that Euclid leaves aside as being formless, to investigate the morphology of the amorphous. Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, and have increasingly chosen to flee from nature by devising theories unrelated to anything we can see or feel.
I take no pleasure in the fact that the scientific predictions Iβve relayed to popular audiences turn out to be true.
It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.
Imagination alone is not enough, because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine
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