Nick Lane Quote

Our bodies are historical accidents of evolution and ultimately can only be understood from an evolutionary perspective: how things got to be the way they are. From this point of view, a good guys-bad guys philosophy is a woefully inadequate way of thinking about molecules as complex as NFΚB. Even so, this is the norm. NFΚB is usually portrayed as Janus-faced, capable of abrupt swings from the good to the bad and the ugly. Sometimes it destroys neurons, sometimes it protects them. It is important, but profoundly unreliable as a drug target.

Nick Lane

Our bodies are historical accidents of evolution and ultimately can only be understood from an evolutionary perspective: how things got to be the way they are. From this point of view, a good guys-bad guys philosophy is a woefully inadequate way of thinking about molecules as complex as NFΚB. Even so, this is the norm. NFΚB is usually portrayed as Janus-faced, capable of abrupt swings from the good to the bad and the ugly. Sometimes it destroys neurons, sometimes it protects them. It is important, but profoundly unreliable as a drug target.

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About Nick Lane

Nick Lane (born 1967) is a British biochemist and writer. He is a professor in evolutionary biochemistry at University College London. He has published five books to date which have won several awards.