PC Arrghh!
Gary Guanine's life was fine,
He had a great spot in the helical line:
Paired with a C, next to an A,
Happy to be part of DNA.
He was in love with his cytosine mate.
Through three hydrogen bonds they'd communicate:
"Aren't you grateful for all of this?
We're loved and safe from hydrolysis!"
He used to be part of an RNA strand
With a secondary structure partner in hand,
But the strand had degraded away, to his rage,
Because of the ribose's 2-prime -OH.
But now he was happy and finally able
To live in a place that he found rather stable.
But Gary only knew half of the story-
He was actually in a laboratory!
So one day he was sucked into a pipette.
When he landed elsewhere, he started to fret.
He was mixed in with others in a deluge,
Whirled 'round and 'round in a centrifuge.
But the worst had actually not yet arrived,
Of his sweet love would he soon be deprived.
It suddenly got hot; he was facing great danger.
The heat caused the DNA to denature!
It separated the DNA,
Moving the single strands every which way.
"Come back my love, my shining C.
Don't walk away and gain entropy!"
He noticed the temperature was now getting lower;
The rate of his movements was quite a bit slower.
But he wouldn't see his love 'til the end of all time
'Cause along came a gigantic enzyme.
And soon, old Gary was face to face
With a DNA polymerase.
"Why are you here?" asked Gary, quite scared.
"I'm here to ensure that you get base paired.
I'm the best matchmaker you might have seen.
Here is your mate, a new cytosine!"
This cytosine was simply not the same,
Not as nice as the former dame.
Her pyrimidine ring kind of sagged,
Her backbone was radioactively tagged.
"Why from my love am I forced to be far?"
She answered, "Oh Gary, it's PCR!
Polymerase Chain Reaction's a way
To amplify a portion of DNA.
They heat a piece up, then break it in two,
Then cool it so primers will bind it like glue.
The polymerase then adds the matching bases
By putting them in the proper spaces.
By repeating this process, I'm happy to say,
You get countless copies of DNA."
But Gary was sad from this unfair deal:
"Don't humans consider how we might feel?
If we went out and broke up each human's marriage,
They'd then understand why I must disparage!"
So Gary cycled through melting and annealing
Many times, with this woeful feeling.
Just hope, as a human, that it's really true
That no one is doing experiments on you!
-Mala L. Radhakrishnan
I've decided. It's a path of bioengineering ahead of me. Hmm, maybe food science is not a bad idea too. It's just got to be Biology for me. Yar, and I finally completed gene manipulation tutorial, after having put it off for weeks! Shall update bout the IMCB attachment thing tmr. I miss school!!
Gary Guanine's life was fine,
He had a great spot in the helical line:
Paired with a C, next to an A,
Happy to be part of DNA.
He was in love with his cytosine mate.
Through three hydrogen bonds they'd communicate:
"Aren't you grateful for all of this?
We're loved and safe from hydrolysis!"
He used to be part of an RNA strand
With a secondary structure partner in hand,
But the strand had degraded away, to his rage,
Because of the ribose's 2-prime -OH.
But now he was happy and finally able
To live in a place that he found rather stable.
But Gary only knew half of the story-
He was actually in a laboratory!
So one day he was sucked into a pipette.
When he landed elsewhere, he started to fret.
He was mixed in with others in a deluge,
Whirled 'round and 'round in a centrifuge.
But the worst had actually not yet arrived,
Of his sweet love would he soon be deprived.
It suddenly got hot; he was facing great danger.
The heat caused the DNA to denature!
It separated the DNA,
Moving the single strands every which way.
"Come back my love, my shining C.
Don't walk away and gain entropy!"
He noticed the temperature was now getting lower;
The rate of his movements was quite a bit slower.
But he wouldn't see his love 'til the end of all time
'Cause along came a gigantic enzyme.
And soon, old Gary was face to face
With a DNA polymerase.
"Why are you here?" asked Gary, quite scared.
"I'm here to ensure that you get base paired.
I'm the best matchmaker you might have seen.
Here is your mate, a new cytosine!"
This cytosine was simply not the same,
Not as nice as the former dame.
Her pyrimidine ring kind of sagged,
Her backbone was radioactively tagged.
"Why from my love am I forced to be far?"
She answered, "Oh Gary, it's PCR!
Polymerase Chain Reaction's a way
To amplify a portion of DNA.
They heat a piece up, then break it in two,
Then cool it so primers will bind it like glue.
The polymerase then adds the matching bases
By putting them in the proper spaces.
By repeating this process, I'm happy to say,
You get countless copies of DNA."
But Gary was sad from this unfair deal:
"Don't humans consider how we might feel?
If we went out and broke up each human's marriage,
They'd then understand why I must disparage!"
So Gary cycled through melting and annealing
Many times, with this woeful feeling.
Just hope, as a human, that it's really true
That no one is doing experiments on you!
-Mala L. Radhakrishnan
I've decided. It's a path of bioengineering ahead of me. Hmm, maybe food science is not a bad idea too. It's just got to be Biology for me. Yar, and I finally completed gene manipulation tutorial, after having put it off for weeks! Shall update bout the IMCB attachment thing tmr. I miss school!!