The Last Word On Nothing

Science education amounts to a Great Winnowing — from millions of school kids fascinated by science down to orders of magnitude fewer actually making a living, or a life, doing it decades later. Whatever the reasons so many flee or are pushed out of science — and there are many, both personal and institutional — I’ve always had a fondness for the dropouts.

Over the years, I’ve taught a lot of science students who fall into that category — the ones who are thinking of getting out apparently have a knack for finding me. While cleaning up some old, old files recently, I happened to find evidence of one of the first. I was a PhD student teaching intro biology. In a quiz, I asked about the Michaelis Menten relationship. One student answered with, “I have no clue … Please explain this to me later so I don’t miss out. Even though I am no longer planning to be a  biologist, these things are good to know in case I ever write a song about rates of enzymes’ reactions and other kinetics goodies.”

I have no idea what became of  this young man, but I remembered him immediately when I found the result of the stern talking-to this answer earned him: much improved performance on the final, and the first instance of “science rap” I recall hearing. This was 1993, long before the technology that made the Large Hadron Rap and Bad Project  videos possible. No recording was made, alas, so the lyrics will have to do. Please do feel free to supply your own human beat-box accompaniment as you read along:

 

To many people, this may seem irrelevant

But this is the story of zygotic development

Why am I doing this? For a grade in my class

Biology 117 — It’s my last

Course in my current major, and I’m gonna switch

‘Cause as future students will learn, bio’s a bitch.

But I got pretty lucky with a TA like Tom Hayden

Lab was more like a pillory than an iron maiden —

A little less torture, a little less pain

A little less stress on my body and brain.

But anyway, I guess I learned something useful

Or at least interesting even if it ain’t crucial.

One cell to two cells to four et cetera, so on

The process continues, and it will just go on

Until the zygote gets ready for cleavage

Dividing between the poles, just believe it

Cleavage is radial in a deuterostome

Including starfish, humans and turtles in a shell home

If there’s a yolk this starts at the opposite end

Called the animal polse as opposed to the one those cells depend

On, and that is the vegetal pole on which they feed

To satisfy the young zygotic creature’s needs.

Throughout this process, the ball of cells is the same size

As the fertilized egg, surprise, surprise.

The nuclear volume grows in volumetric ratio

To the cytoplasmic volume like dollar to peso

Check it out, understand what I meant,

It’s just the first step in zygotic development.

The next step is blastula formation

In a process referred to as blastulation

It’s a hollow structure in the center, for real

The actual cavity, scientists call the blastocoel

Surrounded by a layer of cells called the blastoderm

This happens regardless of mammal or echinoderm.

The hollow ball begins to indent toward the core

The beginning ingression is called a blastopore

Then some cells migrate to the middle after time

And form an internal structure known as the mesenchyme

Which forms around the cavity shaped by this invagination

It’s called the archenteron, and the process, gastrulation.

The archenteron is surrounded by the endoderm

And the whole zygote is covered by the ectoderm.

At the exposed surface of the involution is the dorsal lip.

… it goes on. Which, considering he was able to get it down in a closed-book test, is impressive. In fairness, the lyrics are a tad flat on the page–but rap is a performative art form, and you could say the same about Tupac or Biggie or even Run DMC. And what did they ever have to say about zygotes?

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Top image: Blastula models, photo by estherase at flickr.