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We Are the Amino Acids
C C
We are the amino acids
F C
We have in common these facets
F C
Amine group, carboxyl group and hydrogen
G C
Our side chains make us all different
We are the amino acids
We have in common these facets
Amine group, carboxyl group and hydrogen
Our side chains make us all different
A bunch of nothing for a side-chain is glycine
It's been around since before life even
It’s just a simple molecule in truth
A glycine in a protein's like a missing tooth
With just a methyl's alanine
You can call it bland without it being mean
Boring gives it purpose in the laboratory
You substitute it in to tell an enzyme’s story
Alanine’s got an alpha amino
Pyruvate is her alpha keto
Alanine ain't the star of the active site
It’s the star when you know your pathways right
Valine, isoleucine and leucine
In the hydrophobic pocket of a protein
Their pathways together are coming in medical school
You could put them in your head now like a crazy fool
Every amino acid's got its personality
Some are big this way in actuality
An alpha helix will be interrupted
If a proline’s down the line to disrupt it
You'll see histidine showing up a blind date
Giving or taking a proton from the substrate
But it’s electron pair sometimes just can’t wait
It’ll find a metal ion and coordinate
The electron pair on a nucleophile like serine
Can reverse a protein's own engineering
Destroying it to its very constitution
With nucleophilic acyl substitution
Climb the amino acid decision tree
To find who’s got water intermolecularly
The amide of glutamine and asparagine
Is the side-chain hydrogen bonding king
All the way to the other side of things
With tryptophan or phenylalanine
Water forces these together closer than formerly
When they were making water’s structure too orderly
Some'll put tyrosine in this phenotype
But it's side chain is of the phenol type
So tyrosine possesses a weak acidity
And it'll gain a phosphate with rapidity
Taking on phosphates like an adding machine
That job sometimes goes to threonine
Like isoleucine, it is the presenter
Of a side-chain with a chiral center
Through Henderson-Hasselbalch it's cognizable
That some side chains are ionizable
Climb this mountain and talk to the lama
Or the MCAT’ll make you cry for your mama
An aspartate or a glutamate
Carboxylates working the substrate
Interchanging easily with what you ate
As oxaloacetate or alpha-ketoglutarate
Lysine or arginine finds a hydrogen prizable
This makes their side-chains ionizable
That lysine and arginine are both positive
Is a fact both dispositive and causitive
The side chain of lysine is an amine
At the end of a very long green bean
It'll turn a carbonyl into an imine
Call it a Schiff base or they won't know what you mean
In cysteine and methionine there’s a sulfur hid
That’s how Hershey and Chase learned what DNA did
Infection spun down in their separation
The S35 remained in the supernatant
Cysteine has two sides in redox chemistry
Disulfide and thiol interchange readily
NADPH and glutathione
Keeps things in the homeopathic zone
Med school methionine is a great big deal
Look up B12 and see how things are getting real
Go scout around like Jack on the bean pole
Let it hypnotize and pull you down the rabbit hole
We are the amino acids
We have in common these facets
Amine group, carboxyl group and hydrogen
Our side chains make us all different
- John Wetzel
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