Part of a series of rescued and renovated posts from when Singing Science was starting out as Professor Karmadillo
A podcast interview I did recently (more details to follow!) had me harking back to what start me on the road of combining my musical and scientific passions.
The starting point really was the creation of this song, and putting this online.
I ended up working in the Department of Plant Science at the University of Cambridge. One of the plants that was used a lot was Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress. This was one of the first plants to have its genome sequenced (a manageable 135 megabase pairs in 5 chromosomes) and had a quick lifecycle which made it really popular amongst the David Baulcombe group I was working at, but I had never heard of it before.
One lunchtime I headed off to the market square and was struck by all the roses in the florists stall. This then inspired a song using roses as a metaphor for pop celebrity cultures – I’m not going to even try and name any Instagram influencers or anything! – and the arabidopsis as the unknown scientists that move society forwards in ways not seen by the public.
A Musicians fave plant’s supposed to be marijuana
But I prefer A.thaliana
Unravelling DNA and all the drama
that entails
A model organism standing alone
With your 5 delectable chromosomes
Your genes provide a knockout selection
That I just wanna grow
Why are there no pop hits / about arabidopsis
And all the hard work you doooo for plant science
noone knows your story / roses get the glory
but lets celebrate you in these modern times
The basis of so many papers
the science you inspire will go on ‘n shape us
Working on in quiet
that’s just the way you are
That the public don’t know you, that’s unfair
But they can get your genome, thanks to TAIR
at arabidopsis.org
all the info is there
Why are there no pop hits / about arabidopsis
And all the hard work you doooo for plant science
noone knows your story / roses get the glory
but lets celebrate you in these modern times
A girls favourite flower is of the genus rosa
But a man who gives you those is just a poser
I wanna woman who knows the
ideas that mustard seeds
Why are there no pop hits / about arabidopsis
And all the hard work you doooo for plant science
noone knows your story / roses get the glory
but lets celebrate you in these modern times