Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.'Science,' he says vaguely.

~ Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson Biology Cholesterol Disparate Interests Husbands Lack Of Interest Married Couples Microbiology Neglect Science Wives Women Scientists

It was a fungal party hellscape.

~ Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan Cooking Fungi Microbiology Science

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times. . . . But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature.

~ Ferdinand Cohn

Ferdinand Cohn Biology Death Dreams Eternity Fate Gods Heroes Hope Joy Life Longing Microbiology Middle Ages Mythology Nature Poetry Reality Science Youth

Germans at the time believed, a little oddly, that dyes killed germs by turning the germs’ vital organs the wrong color.

~ Sam Kean

Sam Kean Germany Humorous Microbes Microbiology Oddity

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains.

~ Edward Tatum

Edward Tatum Bacteria Biology Culture Evolution Genetics Microbiology Mutation Natural Selection Nobel Laureate Science

Humanity shares a common ancestry with all living things on Earth. We often share especially close intimacies with the microbial world. In fact, only a small percentage of the cells in the human body are human at all. Yet, the common biology and biochemistry that unites us also makes us susceptible to contracting and transmitting infectious disease.

~ Brenda Wilmoth Lerner

Brenda Wilmoth Lerner Health Infectious Diseases Microbiology Public Health Science

The cause of nutrition and growth resides not in the organism as a whole but in the separate elementary parts—the cells.

~ Theodor Schwann

Theodor Schwann Biology Cell Theory Cells Microbiology Nutrition Science

We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.

~ Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Biology Microbiology Science