A Biologist’s St. Patrick’s Day Song

A 200-year-old Irish classic! Lyrics: In the year of our lord eighteen hundred and eleven On March the seventeenth day I will raise up a beer and I’ll raise up a cheer For Saccharomyces cerevisiae Here’s to brewers yeast, that humblest of all beast Producing carbon gas reducing acetaldehyde But my friends that isn’t all -- it makes ethyl alcohol That is what the yeast excretes and that’s what we imbibe Anaerobic respiration* Also known as fermentation NADH oxidation Give me a beer [CHORUS] My intestinal wall absorbs that ethanol And soon it passes through my blood-brain barrier There’s a girl in the next seat who I didn’t think that sweet But after a few drinks I want to marry her I guess it’s not surprising, my dopamine is rising And my glutamate receptors are all shot I’d surely be bemoaning all the extra serotonin But my judgement is impaired and my confidence is not Allosteric modulation No Long Term Potentiation Hastens my inebriation Give me a beer [CHORUS] When ethanol is in me, some shows up in my kidneys And inhibits vasopressin by degrees A decrease in aquaporins hinders water re-absorption And pretty soon I really have to pee Well my liver breaks it down so my body can rebound By my store of glycogen is soon depleted And tomorrow when I’m sober I will also be hungover Cause I flushed electrolytes that my nerves and muscles needed Diuretic activation Urination urination Urination dehydration Give me a beer [CHORUS] Happy St. Pat’s *Actually, this isn’t true. While both anaerobic respiration and fermentation occur without the use of oxygen, anaerobic respiration utilizes the electron transport chain to generate ATP, while fermentation does not. My bad. I would have remembered that if I wasn’t trying so hard to rhyme. A new corrected version is now up on my channel: CHORDS: Intro: D DAG / bm A D D A G / bm A G D G D A G / G D G A G D A bm / G D A D Pre - chorus: G D A bm / G D A Chorus (Li-Diddly-I): G D A bm A G D A D Verse: D DAG / Bm A D D A G / Bm A G D G D A G / bm A G D A bm / G D A D