09 November 2007

Sing-a-long with Stebbins

Kent Holsinger has a copy of "Sing-a-long with Stebbins" (a pamphlet of botanical songs passed out at the all congress dinner of the XI International Botanical Congress, 1969) and I thought I'd type out one of the songs and share.

Stebbins, is of course G. Ledyard Stebbins, writer of Variation and Evolution in Plants and also important researcher into the role of hybridization and polyploidy in speciation and plant evolution.

So warm up your vocal chords, and get ready to sing "Oh Chromosomes", sung to the tune of "O Tannenbaum"
(for those non-xmas carol singing people in the world, it goes like this).


OH CHROMOSOMES
(to the tune of O Tannenbaum)

Oh chromosomes, my chromosomes,
How faithful is thy mission.
Oh chromosomes, my chromosomes,
Thou bringest my condition.
You make my eyes look brown or blue,
My blood group, too, depends on you,
Meiosis brings us something new,
Not gained by simple fission.

Oh chromosomes, my chromosomes,
We've learned to know you better.
We know the code of DNA,
We can translate each letter.
Our thymine must have adenine,
Our guanine mates with cytosine;
Their messenger, pure RNA
Puts our proteins together.

Oh chromosomes, my chromosomes,
How faithful is thy mission.
Oh chromosomes, my chromosomes,
How sad is my condition.
My grandsire's gift for singing well
Has gone to some lost polar cell.
That's why I sing this doggerel;
I can do no better.


(Stebbins in 1969, photo from here)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

What Amy didn't mention is that of the dozen or so songs in the sing a long, "O Chromosomes" is my favorite.

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