T G G, C T T, G G & A.
The DNA bases are the letters I say.
A T G, A C C, A G & C.
They're part of a gene from the family tree.
A C C, G A A, C C & U.
Transcription of DNA is easy to do.
U A C, U G G, U C & G.
The A's go with U's, and the G's go with C's.
Threonine, glutamic acid, and proline.
The mRNA gets translated to protein.
Tyrosine, tryptophan, serine, and stop!
Translation is halted by a stop codon cop.
What have we heard here, and what have we learned?
There's DNA, RNA, and protein in turn.
RNA's copied from DNA strands,
And protein is built using RNA plans.
Such is the way by which cells can make hay
From T G G, C T T, G G & A.
Comments
This poem was written for a Seattle-area series of poetry
readings on "Genetics and the poetics of life." It covers the cellular
processes of transcription and translation. As an illustration, the DNA
sequences in the first stanza are transcribed into RNA sequences in the
second stanza, which are then translated into amino acid sequences in the third
stanza. Since the genetic code is based on triplets -- each set of three bases
encodes one amino acid -- the poem is written in a triplet or "waltz"
rhythm.