The Lighter Side

Around the Nucleus (To the Tune of ‘‘Across the Universe’’)&s

Received for publication, October 20, 2011, and in revised form, January 19, 2012

Kevin Ahern‡

From the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331

DNA gets spooled like balls of yarnWithin the chromosomesUnwinding when it’s duplicated thereAround the nucleus

Primase sets down RNATo pave the path for DNAAcross a replication fork

Complementarit-y rules (ahhhhhh)DNA Pol-y-mer-aseSynthesizing DNAs(and) RNA Pol-y-mer-aseMaking all the RNAs

Helicases split the strandsIn front of replication forksTo make templates accessibleAround the nucleus

Complementary basesMatch the bonds of ‘H’ and hold the strandsTogether till they’re pulled apartAround the nucleus

Hydrogen bonding fuels (ahhhhhhhhh)Tiny alpha helix bandsFolding for the cells’ demandsBeta sheets comprised of strandsMeeting little cells’ demands

Exons link majestically all guidedBy a master plan encoded in the cell’s genomeCountless combinations of the codonsBring diversity to life evolving on and onAround the nucleus

COM-plex-es rule the world (ahhhhhhhh)Ribosomes and spliceosomesTransforming the cells’ genomesRibosomes and spliceosomesBuilders of the proteomes

&sAdditional supporting information (an .mp3 version of thissong) may be found in the online version of this article.‡ To whom correspondence should be addressed.Tel.: 541-737-2305 E-mail: ahernk@orst.edu.

This paper is available on line at http://www.bambed.org DOI 10.1002/bmb.205981

Q 2012 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION

Vol. 00, No. 00, pp. 000–000, 2012