Oh Little Protein Molecule
(To the tune of "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem")
Copyright ©2003 Kevin Ahern

I am very pleased that Tim Karplus has made a professional recording of this song (more to come!). A downloadable MP3 of this song can be downloaded HERE and others can be downloaded HERE. You will need to unzip the file to release the MP3. This song is also contained on the new Metabolic Melodies CD available for sale HERE.

Instructor sings
Oh little protein molecule
You're lovely and serene
With twenty zwitterions like
Cysteine and alanine
Everyone sings
Your secondary structure
Has pitches and repeats
Arranged in alpha helices
And beta pleated sheets

Instructor sings
The Ramachandran plots are
Predictions made to try
To tell the structures you can have
For angles phi and psi
Everyone sings
And tertiary structure
Gives polypeptides zing
Because of magic that occurs
In protein fol-ding

Instructor sings
A folded enzyme’s active
And starts to catalyze
When activators bind into
Its allosteric sites
Everyone sings
Some other mechanisms
Control the enzyme rates
By regulating synthesis
And placement of phosphates

Instructor sings
And all the regulation
That's found inside of cells
Reminds the students learning it
Of pathways straight from hell
Everyone sings
So here’s how to remember
The phosphate strategies
They turn the GPb's to a's
And GSa's to b's

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