Protein Trafficking Song - to the tune of Smash Mouth's "All Star"
Created by a student in Spring 2018
Professor Lowery told me the world is full of proteins
It took some time to learn how they worked
I was feeling kind of dumb with the vocab and the problems
They were all going over my head
So, I wrote this song and I won’t stop singing
Not till I learn how all proteins are moving
It all starts with the rough ER
It makes proteins but not the lipids
So many ribosomes, they don’t stay there
And they make different proteins
They all go to the ER,
And get transported via vesicles
Hey, now, you’re a protein, have an ER, signal sequence
Hey now, I know an SRP will, recognize, you
Then an SRP receptor
Brings you to the protein translocator
It’s a busy place, they say it never calms down
Your ER signal sequence gets stuck in the membrane
The sequences tend not to differ
Hydrophobic regions are always in the picture
It starts going inside, at the n terminus
Transmembrane regions are next, hydrophobic too
The c terminus is last, at the end of the chain
They thread through the ER and there's no need to change
There’s a, nifty trick, to remember, how they thread
If there's, an ER signal sequence, the n terminus is in the, lumen
But if there is not,
It stays in the cytosol
Now there's, modification, takes place in the, golgi
It gets, glycosylated, if there's, Asparagine,
Disulfide bonds in the ER,
Staple proteins together
Somebody once asked, what if they misfold a lot?
Then you get an unfolded protein response
Makes more ER, what a concept
And a few more chaperones as well
Or it goes to, apoptosis
Well, the transport starts coming and it won’t stop coming
Vesicles made with clathrin and dynamin
It makes sense, vesicles go everywhere
The proteins move and your cell just functions
So much to do so many places to go
Because the cell needs a whole lot
They undergo exocytosis
They undergo endocytosis
Hey now, you’re about done, just a couple things to, know
Hey now, there are two types, of, exocytosis
There’s constitutive and regulated
Constant dumping or with a signal
Constitutive and regulated
Constant dumping or with a signal