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CRISPR stands for "Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats" and the palindromes in DNA resemble the palindromes in words and poetry in key ways.
Can you guess which palindromic sentence in the lyrics I wrote myself?
Palindrome in the genome
CRISPR on the beats
With the PAM on the jam
So it knows where to cleave
Protospacer Adjacent Motifs
In the genome
CRISPR on the beats
Palindrome, I REFER to a sequence repeated
From the back to the front: NEVER ODD OR EVEN
Or when ACGTTACC
Matches GGTAACGT
From the back to the front like a mirror
CRISPR is the zipper, Cas-9 is the shearer
With no error, ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD
WE FEW, DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA?
The CRISPR era, yo, I hope it goes well
I know it will now that MADAM Emanuelle
Charpentier is known for genome skills
With Jennifer Doudna, they hold the Nobel
DEIFIED in the SAGAS of the public EYE
On the RADAR of science, they RACECAR drive
And IF I HAD A HIFI, I’d wanna ride
To the vibe of CRISPR Cas-9
‘Cause I, MAN, A GROSS ORGAN AM I
DRAB AS A FOOL, ALOOF AS A BARD
Ready to BORROW OR ROB any rhyme
From a lab to LEVEL up my lines…
Palindrome in the genome
CRISPR on the beats
With the PAM on the jam
So it knows where to cleave
Proto-spacer Adjacent Motifs
With the Cas-9 enzyme
Snip those genes
Palindrome
In the genome, don’t sleep
On the Clustered Regularly
Interspersed Short
Palindromic Repeats
In the genome
CRISPR on the beat
Palindromes on the brain, like WOW and YAY
Every TESTSET gets better STATS every day
My daughter’s name is HANNAH and when she’s my age
We’re gonna treat brain disease with guide RNA
The CRISPR Cas-9 way, that’s the REVIVER
Bacteria first evolved it to fight a virus
But now it’s at the forefront of cutting-edge science
For Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s
When a braincell firing has a protein intervening
You can see the genes involved – CRISPR screening
You can even light them up, it’s not a GAG
Fit the proteins with bioluminescent tags
To make them POP, and you can LOL, cool
But can you make a CRISPR knockout cell pool?
To study Huntington’s disease with repeats
In HTT genes, too many CAGs!
Don’t get annoyed, past generations didn’t get a choice
To grow pluripotent stem cell organoids
But thanks to CRISPR Cas-9 we’re now poised
To shed a little light as we stare into the void
Like an OOZY RAT IN A SANITARY ZOO
WON’T LOVERS REVOLT NOW and get a room?
Get a lab and test whether each TENET’s true
SO MANY DYNAMOS in this field of view
So this goes out to the whole CRISPR Cas-9 crew…
Palindrome in the genome
CRISPR on the beats
With the PAM on the jam
So it knows where to cleave
Proto-spacer Adjacent Motifs
With the Cas-9 enzyme
Snip those genes
Palindrome
In the genome, don’t sleep
On the Clustered Regularly
Interspersed Short
Palindromic Repeats
In the genome
CRISPR on the beat
credits
from Rapsode,
released May 15, 2023
Lyrics by Baba Brinkman
Music by Tom Caruana
Keys by Simon Kendall
Made with support from Synthego for World CRISPR Day: worldcrisprday.com
