The Lighter Side

Good Protein Synthesis (To the Tune of ‘‘Good King Wenceslaus’’)*hS

Received for publication, May 5, 2011

Kevin Ahern‡

Dept. of Biochemistry & Biophysics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331

Amino acids cannot joinBy themselves togetherThey require ribosomesTo create the tether

All the protein chains get made‘Cording to instructionCarried by m-R-N-AIn peptide bond construction

Small subunit starts it allWith initiationPairing up two RNAsAt the docking station

Shine Dalgarno’s complementIn the 16 essesLines the A-U-G up soSynthesis commences

Elongation happens inRibosomic insidesWhere rRNA createsBonds for polypeptides

These depart the ribosomePassing right straight through itIn the tiny channels thereOf the large subunit

Finally when the sequence ofOne of the stop codonsParks itself in the A siteSynthesis can’t go on

P-site RNA lets goOf what it was holdingSo the polypeptide canGet on with its folding

*Copyright � 2011 Kevin AhernhS Additional Supporting Information (an mp3 file) 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.

DOI 10.1002/bamb.20539 This paper is available on line at http://www.bmbd.org468

Q 2011 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION

Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 468, 2011