Sugar Receptors

This parody (written by Greg Crowther) is sung to the tune of "Somebody's Baby" (written by Danny Kortchmar and Jackson Browne and performed by Jackson Browne).

This song parody was written when, at the end of a digression on my taste in musical "oldies," a student dared me to reference Jackson Browne during the final class session of the quarter. Since we were about to cover the paper Evolution of sweet taste perception in hummingbirds by transformation of the ancestral umami receptor by Maude W. Baldwin et al. (2014), I wrote some lyrics about that, using my favorite Jackson Browne song as a template. This song will be featured in the forthcoming film Tasty Times at Harvard U., to be directed by Cameron Crow. P.S. GPCR = G protein-coupled receptor.

Well, just-a look at that bird with the bill of remarkable size.
She's got to have sugar receptors....
She must have sugar receptors....
The other birds in the meadow see the flowers and they pass on by --
But she's got to have sugar receptors....
She must have sugar receptors....
She's got to have sugar receptors
Where her taste buds reside.

She's got to have some sort of GPCRs
To detect the carbs.
Yeah, but her sweet receptors are different from ours.

In the Archilocus genome, no T1R2 can be found,
But she's got to have sugar receptors....
She must have sugar receptors....
In T1R3, 19 mutations turned the function around.
It's got to be the sugar receptor....
It must be the sugar receptor....
It's got to be the sugar receptor --
At least it is now.

She's got to have some sort of GPCRs
To detect the carbs.
Yeah, but her sweet receptors are different from ours.

Within class Aves, the hummingbirds sure are unique.
Even with the chimney swifts, sugar is not what they seek.
But hummingbirds just can't wait to get that stuff in their beak!

Yeah, they've got to have some sort of GPCRs
To detect the carbs.
Yeah, but their sweet receptors are different from ours.

They've got to have some sort of GPCRs
To detect the carbs.
Yeah, but their sweet receptors are different from ours.

They have GPCRs to detect the carbs.
They have GPCRs to detect the carbs.
They have GPCRs to detect the carbs....