The joy of this job is that we are constantly reading about new research, whether its newly submitted manuscripts or just keeping up with current literature. The downside, of course, is that all of these things are written in prose. Where’s the poetry in science, I ask? (as did Feynman) You can find one recent example in a News & Views in our July issue, but I think this is only the start of something good, as Herman’s Hermits told us.*
Since all cultural revolutions have to start small, I thought I would suggest the idea of chemistry haikus, since a) they don’t have to rhyme, b) they aren’t very long (remember the 5-7-5 motif?), and c) they don’t have the tendency for the downward spiral in the same way that limericks do…
The idea is easy. Instead of writing down that your reaction went with 0% yield, try this:
Water gets in and
Messes up everything. Bah!
It’s time for a break.
Or, when your rotation student tends your reaction overnight and you return to a mess, sum it up with these few words:
All at once I find
My nice halogenation
Didn’t work at all
Finally, for those of you bioorganic folks, I think the starter ‘Oh stupid peptide’ could take you a long way… For example:
Oh stupid peptide,
why won’t you make a helix?
It isn’t that hard
Oh stupid peptide,
please come off the resin now.
TFA ran out.
You see how it works. So, with these suggestions as your rallying battle cry, go forth and be poetic! And let me know what good ideas you come up with to describe your scientific adventures.
Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)
(*ed’s note, 01/31/08: a reader who is a more knowledgeable music fan than I am (or just not as inept at using the ‘interweb’, perhaps) pointed out that this song was actually by this group, not the Beach Boys, as previously indicated. Oops!)
Froot Loops are not fruit
Their ingredients include
Niacinamide
You’ve obviously never seen the classic JOC paper from 1971 by Bunnett and Kearley, which can be found here!!!
You might find one or two haiku here too… (I used to have the office next to Steve Hardinger when I was at UCLA…)
Here are my attempts đŸ™‚
Stirring at reflux
Overnight. Leaky tubing
Flooded his office
Oh dear western blot
where is my protein hiding?
not on the membrane
Hell’s brimstone pervades
A synthetic neophyte
Dimethyl sulfide
LCAO works
For nascent organic, then
Woodward-Hoffmann rules.
My advisor, Alanna Schepartz, alerted me to your recent blog. She suggested I send you a copy of a Shakespearean-styled sonnet I wrote about protein kinases for a journal club presentation some months ago. Enjoy!
Paper it’s describing: M. Azam et al. PNAS 2006, 103, 9244-9249 (with notable author William C. Shakespeare)
Abl mutations can become the norm
Imatinib resistance its effect
But Src and Abl sites do quite conform
Duly inhibited their ways connect
Two compounds, both alike, put to the test
A valiant effort ‘gainst the mutant’s wrath
They showed resistant enzymes who was best
A single P loop mutant has last laugh
The hydrophobic pocket it directs
A gateway to the enzyme active site
New compounds boast avoidance and protect
Yet topple host defenses with their might
The active conformation is the key
To target in the quest for synergy.
My students have written hundreds of organic chemistry haiku…some good, some not so good. Check them out at: https://web.chem.ucla.edu/~harding/index.html by clicking on the ‘Organic Chemistry Haiku’ button.
Enjoy!