From The Gene Page 234:

It is the impulse of science to try to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it. Recombinant DNA had pushed genetics from the realm of sciece into the realm of technology. Genes were not abstractions anymore. They could be liberated from the genomes of organisms where they had been trapped for millennia, shuttled between species, amplified, purified, extended, shortened, altered, remixed, mutated, mixed, matched, cut, pasted, edited; they were infintely malleable to human intervention. Genes were no longer just the subjects of study, but the instruments of study. There is an illuminated moment in the development of a child when she grasps the recursiveness of language: just as thoughts can be used to generate words, she realizes, words can be used to generate thoughts. Recombinant DNA had made the language of genetics recursive. Biologists had spent decades trying to interrogate the nature of the gene -- but now it was the gene that could be used to interrogate biology. We had graduated, in short, from thinking about genes, to thinking in genes.

翻譯：

科學的出發點是了解自然，而科技的出發點是掌控自然。重組DNA的實現，使遺傳學從一門科學變成了一項科技。基因已經不再是抽象概念，不再只是千萬年來禁錮在基因組中的一部分，相反，基因已經能從基因組中提取出來，在物種間轉移，并進行復制、提純、擴充、縮減、修改、重排、變異、混合、配對、剪切、貼合、編輯。在人類手上，它們呈現出無限可能。至此，基因已經不只是研究的課題，而變成了研究的工具。就好像小孩在長大的過程中會恍然大悟，明白語言是雙向的，即思想可以產生話語，而話語也能產生思想。重組DNA技術的出現，讓遺傳學的語言（基因）也變成了雙向的。生物學家耗時幾十年，想要探尋基因的本質--而現在可以利用基因反過來探尋生物學本質。簡言之，我們已經邁上新起點，基因從“問題”變成了“思路”。

From The Gene Page 244:

It was an inverted fable: an academic Goliath versus a pharmaceutical David, one lumbering, powerful, handicapped by size, the other nimble, quick, adept at dancing around rules.

翻譯：

這簡直就是巨人和羊倌故事的翻版嘛：學術界的巨人單挑制藥界小個子，一個孔武有力，五大三粗，可是反應遲鈍，另一個機敏靈活，凌波微步，而且擅長使巧勁兒。