So, I'm taking this Introductory level biology sciences course, as a requirement of my degree plan. University and all. The course is entirely online, you just log onto a website, read a dozen pages of material, and take a quiz, all at whatever pace you do it. There is a calendar, which I've completely forgotten and consequently bombed, but I have my hopes.
But that's not the important part. The important part is the weird, pseudo-objectivist tone of the texts. I would call it fourth-wall-breaking if textbooks had a fourth wall, because huge chunks of the material are related to goings on in the world instead of raw scientific theory. It's also a little science-preachy, making a lot of subtly snide comments against religion as it wandering into anthropology, then railing against overreactionary hippies in a chapter on genetically modified foods. But what made me happy was this gem of surreal nonsense in a stupefyingly cold chapter on phospholipids...
There’s a protein that’s made to introduce two substrates
And it speeds up a substrate reaction.
Now reactants one and two are in love, this is true,
But our protein helps to introduce them.
Ooooo, and they make neat products,
when enzymes bring two substrates together.
Enzymes have active sites that hold substrates just right
in creating enzyme-substrate complexes.
It is simple you see, lock and key theory,
as the substrates stick to an enzyme.
When reactions are done, all are changed except one,
and the thing that won’t change is the enzyme.
Sometimes an enzyme needs a helper, a coenzyme,
to help it do what must be done.
They help enzymes speed up substrate reactions,
their common names are vitamins.
Ooooo, and it makes me wonder,
what would happen without protein enzymes.
Homeostasis is neat, a metabolic feat
in a process of cell regulation.
So stick this in your head, without proteins you’re dead,
and the same if you have no coenzymes.
A pH, high or low, will break peptides, you know,
In a process called denatruation.
It’s the same thing with heat, but cold enzymes drag their feet,
you can’t go if you slow your reactions.
Ooooo, and it makes me wonder,
if we croak when we choke our reactions.
If there’s more substrate than enzymes, in a reaction,
It’s called the point of saturation.
With more substrates than an enzyme can handle,
Substrate reactions start to level.
Life would be quite pathetic, without saturation kinetics,
and for metabolic cellular regulation.
Ooooo, it really makes me wonder,
how enzymes speed substrate reactions.
It's attributed to someone called "Doc Henry". I'm sure I can find a recording of this Doc Henry singing his tune, in this crazy new YouTubed world of ours.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 15884957 times)