Bringing a melodious passion to biophysics

Biophysics and sing-alongs. Oddly enough, there is a time and place in which these two concepts are combined to create an uncommon student experience.

Every term, hundreds of students cram into Milam Auditorium, nervously anticipating the dreaded biochemistry classes required for any student going into the medical, dental or other health-related fields.

The instructor of this course, Professor Kevin Ahern, developed a new way to help students learn and also relieve some of the pressures associated with the class, using something he calls "metabolic melodies."

These melodies are clever jingles sung to the tunes of well-known songs such as "Jingle Bells" or the "ABCs," and can be used to help students remember the various complex processes and terms that his class demands.

Take for example his song "Transcription," sung to the tune of "Frosty the Snowman," with lyrics consisting of "Phos-pho-di-esters, are the bonds of RNA, that support a ribo-poly-mer made of G, C, U and A!"

Ahern said his inspiration for the idea came years ago. "I wanted to do something kind of fun that would relax students," he said. "I wanted to have something that would cut through students' anxieties."

His pupils can attest. It seems that everyone is made more comfortable that the class isn't as straightforward and serious as one would expect.

Ahern said that the "feedback is very positive," and that he will continue to write the melodies, which he produces and performs mostly by himself.

In fact, he writes a new one every term.

"When I first started teaching in the mid-90's, I taught my first big class. I was nervous and at the end of the term I felt really good about it and I wanted to do something to celebrate," Ahern said. "I saw this book called the ‘Biochemist's Songbook,' so I sang and the reaction was, ‘Oh my god.'"

The process to write the jingles is obviously a difficult one, as he has to make the complex terminology flow together and rhyme. He claims the easiest way to do this is "to match the cadence of the words to the cadence of a melody."

The first time this developed took place in class, when he was explaining "gluconeogenesis," which is the process where we make glucose in our bodies, hummed to the tune of  "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

"It popped into my head, the wires crossed, and I hear the phrase: ‘gluconeogenesis is something quite atrocious.' And the cadence matched supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Almost every song I write has a hook like that I'd catch. And once I get that hook, then the rest of the words of the song usually just flow really easily."

This single stroke of ingenuity sparked the creation of hundreds of metabolic melodies; 120 melodies, to be exact.

"I found that I really liked to write the melodies, and I sort of use them as a teaching tool, so there's real biochemistry that's in them, and they're focused on specific subjects. And they're fun to sing in class."

Ahern is currently using his unconventional method in his lecture on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays this term.

Martin Forde, staff reporter, and Joce DeWitt, news editor