When I was a senior in high school, I gave my friend Arthur Malpere a ride to school in my ’77 MGB just about every day (well, every day it was running). I had a cassette of the then fairly new Licensed to Ill, and Art insisted that we listen to it every damn day. The ride to school was on the order of ten minutes, so we would listen to ten minutes on the way to school, then pick up where we left off, usually mid-song, on the way home (for those of you too young to remember cassettes, it wasn’t trivial to return to the beginning of a song). Of all the outstanding songs on that album, possibly my favorite was “Paul Revere,” a sort of old-west style automythology of the band’s origin (in spite of the casual misogyny, I still do like it pretty well).
All three of the Volvox conferences to date have included an art/video/poetry contest, and this year’s winner, Zach Grochau-Wright, was kind enough to let me post his entry. Sadly, no one thought to video Zach’s actual performance, but if he does upload a version to youtube, I’ll be sure to post a link.
Volvocine Rap
Based on “Paul Revere” by the Beastie Boys
Written by Zach Grochau-Wright
Now here’s a little story I like to tell
About a group of algae you know so well
It started way back in history
At the origin of the Volvocales!
It started with a cell like Chlamydomonas
Transitions in individuality it’ll show us
Swimming in a pool, keeping it’s cool
Trying to photosynthesize, like you learned in school
One lonely unicell she be
All by herself with no body
The sun is beating down in the chloroplast
‘Means the sugar’s getting made, the cell is getting fat
Now the cell has almost reached the threshold size
‘Means it’s time to start getting ready to divide
——Instrumental——
The cell enters the first stages of mitosis
Dividing into two right before us
Next comes four, then eight, then sixteen
Palintomy gives powers of two when dividing
But something’s amiss
Flawed cytokinesis?
The cell’s formed a collective
Separation was defective
Have to cooperate to form a new level
Become multicellular like the Tasmanian Devil
Now the cells are cooperating as a group
Swimming together like a disciplined troop
The colony’s all undifferentiated cells
Only modest tweaks to flagellar organelles
Cooperation’s high due to cells being kin
You think the story’s over, but it’s ready to begin
——Instrumental——-
Major transitions can be rough
Cell level constraints make it tough
To make a colony, a cell needs to grow big
But constraints make development a tough gig
Beat cell limits for selection’s favor
One answer is the division of labor
Some cells do this, others do that
Each playing their part like a professional act
Some do survival, others reproduction
Working together for optimal function
But which cells do what must be controlled
So that adaptations can be kept ahold
Comparative genomics shows modest expansion
Evolution works subtler than imagined
But a few gene family expansions were key
Especially for increasing size of the body
One such family is the pheophorines
Metalloproteases give us more ones
Cell cycle evolution played a role
The number of cells must be controlled
Evolving inversion is also key
Unless you’re Astrephomene
But what gene controls cell specialization?
Whose mutation causes regeneration
The gene regA, which deserves respect
Chloroplast biogenesis is what it effects
Originating with the Volvocaceae
Its original function is a mystery
To control somatic cells it was co-opted
A changed geno-pheno map was adopted
With soma on survival and reproduction by the germ
The evolutionary transition has come full term
[…] artist in the obscure sub-genre of volvocine poetry, having previously written and performed “Volvocine rap” at the Volvox 2015 meeting. Here it is in its barely-longer-than-his-name […]