Double Dactyls
Poems
These are "double dactyls." A dactyl sounds like "radium" or "Marjorie" or "harmonize." So a double dactyl sounds like "Benjamin Harrison" or "Nadia's cranium" or "Muscular Dystrophy."
The rules are as follows: (a) 8 lines in two stanzas; (b) first line must be nonsense; (c) Line 2 has to be someone's name; (d) at least one line has to be a single word (I used to think, in error, that this had to be Line 6, so all the double dactyls below suffer from this constraint); (e) Lines 4 and 8 must rhyme. If you don't believe me, see Wikipedia.
I
Bibbity bobbity
Roderick and Harrison
Stalking gerontogenes
Strain after strain
Clone the old-fashioned way –
Heterosexually –
Watching their breeding stock
Fill most of Maine.
[Note: Tom Roderick and Dave Harrison, of the Jackson Lab in Bar Harbor, Maine, proposed to breed long-lived mice by storing offspring, grand-offspring, and so forth, until their great-great-(etc.)-grandparents died. You do the math.]
==============================
==============================
X
Higgledy Piggledy
Marjorie Levinson
Whose nickname, Bobbity,
Once private lore,
Double-dactyliac
Sesquipedalian
Doggerel-mongers just
Need to ignore.
[Note: too few of my friends have names that are double dactyls. Among them, Marjorie is the only one, so far as I know, whose childhood nickname was, in fact, “Bobbity.” So the poem basically wrote itself.]
==============================
XIX [The Paul Glenn Trilogy]
[Note: Paul Glenn, through the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, is a major source of private support for basic research in aging, partly through the establishment of Paul F. Glenn research centers at a dozen universities. Our goal is to find drugs that stop aging and provide them to Paul (among others), so we will all stay healthy a lot longer. If you don’t know who Beresford-Tipton is, you could consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire.]
Bibbity Bobbity
Paul F. Glenn Institutes,
Each one atop its own
Fountain of Youth,
Note that their patron now
Semi-mysteriously
No longer looks quite as
Long in the tooth.
====================================
Bibbity Bobbity
Glenn Found. for Med. Research
Spurring young scientists
Forth to the Quest,
Picks its awardees, then
Beresford Tipton-like
Moves to the shadows and
Hopes for the best.
====================================
Bibbity Bobbity
Dr. Methuselah
(Otherwise known as the
Dapper Paul Glenn)
Hopes his investments in
Gerontological
Ventures will all pay off;
V'imru "amen."
These are "double dactyls." A dactyl sounds like "radium" or "Marjorie" or "harmonize." So a double dactyl sounds like "Benjamin Harrison" or "Nadia's cranium" or "Muscular Dystrophy."
The rules are as follows: (a) 8 lines in two stanzas; (b) first line must be nonsense; (c) Line 2 has to be someone's name; (d) at least one line has to be a single word (I used to think, in error, that this had to be Line 6, so all the double dactyls below suffer from this constraint); (e) Lines 4 and 8 must rhyme. If you don't believe me, see Wikipedia.
Bibbity bobbity
Roderick and Harrison
Stalking gerontogenes
Strain after strain
Clone the old-fashioned way –
Heterosexually –
Watching their breeding stock
Fill most of Maine.
[Note: Tom Roderick and Dave Harrison, of the Jackson Lab in Bar Harbor, Maine, proposed to breed long-lived mice by storing offspring, grand-offspring, and so forth, until their great-great-(etc.)-grandparents died. You do the math.]
II
Bibbity bobbity
Carey and Curtsinger
Counting fly carcasses
Zillions a day
Find an occasional
Drosomethusaleh;
Old fruit flies neither die
Nor fade away.
[Note: Jim Carey and Jim Curtsinger, fly aging experts, measured lifespan of an awful lot of fruit flies to see if eventually the few survivors would stop dying like flies. Answer: sort of.]
==============================
III
Bibbity bobbity
Nadia Rosenthal,
Constructing Mighty Mouse
Base after base:
Muscular rodents made
Transgenotypically
Needn't let hamsters kick
Sand in their face.
[Note: Nadia Rosenthal made a genetically engineered mouse with biceps out to here. A very scary mouse.]
==============================
IV
Bibbity bobbity
Michal Jazwinski
Pioneer LAG™-meister
Leader of yeasts
Claims that his moist little
Saccharomyces
Resemble, in some ways,
Less tractable beasts.
[Note: Mike Jazwinski studies aging in baker’s yeast that age a LOT faster than you or I. “LAG” is his abbreviation for “longevity assurance genes.”]
==============================
V
Bibbity bobbity
Michal Jazwinski
Spritzing LAG™-ointment
On mama-yeast's gears
Eases his poor, bud-scarred
S. cerevisiae
Downhill, on spirals, to
Well-deserved beers.
[Note: Saccharomyces cerevisiase, Dr. Jazwinki’s favorite model of really really fast aging, is also used for making wine and beer – not just bread. He counts the buds on each yeast cell to see how far down it is on its spiral to clonal death.]]
==============================
VI
Bibbity bobbity
Dr. Jan Hoeijmakers
Tired of working with
Slow-aging beasts
Snips out one deoxy-
Ribonucleotide;
Now his mice age just as
Quickly as yeasts
[Note: Dr. Hoeijmakers, like me, is sad that regular mice take so long to get old. So he has done some genetic engineering to make them get old quicker, so he can get on with his science.]
==============================
VII
Bibbity bobbity
Edward Lakatta
Guarding your heartbeat
From time's wear and tear
Shows that the levels of
Cardiovascular
Adenylcyclase
Had Beta be there.
[Note: Dr. Lakatta is an expert on the aging heart. Some of his early work dealt with how beta-adrenergic agents worked by affecting the enzyme adenylcyclase.]
==============================
VIII
Bibbity bobbity
Edward J. Masoro
All his rats ancient, and
None of them stout
Fears that rats sentenced to
Near-immortality
Given their 'druthers, would
Druther eat out.
[Note: Ed Masoro did many of the key experiments on the anti-aging effects of caloric restriction on rats. For a rat, joining the Masoro lab was a mix of “good news, bad news.”
==============================
Bibbity bobbity
Carey and Curtsinger
Counting fly carcasses
Zillions a day
Find an occasional
Drosomethusaleh;
Old fruit flies neither die
Nor fade away.
[Note: Jim Carey and Jim Curtsinger, fly aging experts, measured lifespan of an awful lot of fruit flies to see if eventually the few survivors would stop dying like flies. Answer: sort of.]
==============================
III
Bibbity bobbity
Nadia Rosenthal,
Constructing Mighty Mouse
Base after base:
Muscular rodents made
Transgenotypically
Needn't let hamsters kick
Sand in their face.
[Note: Nadia Rosenthal made a genetically engineered mouse with biceps out to here. A very scary mouse.]
==============================
IV
Bibbity bobbity
Michal Jazwinski
Pioneer LAG™-meister
Leader of yeasts
Claims that his moist little
Saccharomyces
Resemble, in some ways,
Less tractable beasts.
[Note: Mike Jazwinski studies aging in baker’s yeast that age a LOT faster than you or I. “LAG” is his abbreviation for “longevity assurance genes.”]
==============================
V
Bibbity bobbity
Michal Jazwinski
Spritzing LAG™-ointment
On mama-yeast's gears
Eases his poor, bud-scarred
S. cerevisiae
Downhill, on spirals, to
Well-deserved beers.
[Note: Saccharomyces cerevisiase, Dr. Jazwinki’s favorite model of really really fast aging, is also used for making wine and beer – not just bread. He counts the buds on each yeast cell to see how far down it is on its spiral to clonal death.]]
==============================
VI
Bibbity bobbity
Dr. Jan Hoeijmakers
Tired of working with
Slow-aging beasts
Snips out one deoxy-
Ribonucleotide;
Now his mice age just as
Quickly as yeasts
[Note: Dr. Hoeijmakers, like me, is sad that regular mice take so long to get old. So he has done some genetic engineering to make them get old quicker, so he can get on with his science.]
==============================
VII
Bibbity bobbity
Edward Lakatta
Guarding your heartbeat
From time's wear and tear
Shows that the levels of
Cardiovascular
Adenylcyclase
Had Beta be there.
[Note: Dr. Lakatta is an expert on the aging heart. Some of his early work dealt with how beta-adrenergic agents worked by affecting the enzyme adenylcyclase.]
==============================
VIII
Bibbity bobbity
Edward J. Masoro
All his rats ancient, and
None of them stout
Fears that rats sentenced to
Near-immortality
Given their 'druthers, would
Druther eat out.
[Note: Ed Masoro did many of the key experiments on the anti-aging effects of caloric restriction on rats. For a rat, joining the Masoro lab was a mix of “good news, bad news.”
==============================
IX
Bibbity bobbity
Harmon C. Dunathan
Shows, pulling conformers
Down from the shelf
B6, which mostly works
Co-enzymatically
Can, pyridoxically,
Schiff for itself.
[Note: this is the first double dactyl I wrote, one boring day in organic chemistry class. Harmon Dunathan taught chemistry at Haverford College. He was an expert on Vitamin B6, also called pyridoxal phosphate, which was thought to work only when teaming up with an enzyme, i.e. working as a “co-enzyme.” Harmon found that the vitamin could work on its own, with no enzyme needed. The chemical reaction involves a “Schiff base,” providing the pun in the last line. You had to be there.]
Bibbity bobbity
Harmon C. Dunathan
Shows, pulling conformers
Down from the shelf
B6, which mostly works
Co-enzymatically
Can, pyridoxically,
Schiff for itself.
[Note: this is the first double dactyl I wrote, one boring day in organic chemistry class. Harmon Dunathan taught chemistry at Haverford College. He was an expert on Vitamin B6, also called pyridoxal phosphate, which was thought to work only when teaming up with an enzyme, i.e. working as a “co-enzyme.” Harmon found that the vitamin could work on its own, with no enzyme needed. The chemical reaction involves a “Schiff base,” providing the pun in the last line. You had to be there.]
==============================
X
Higgledy Piggledy
Marjorie Levinson
Whose nickname, Bobbity,
Once private lore,
Double-dactyliac
Sesquipedalian
Doggerel-mongers just
Need to ignore.
[Note: too few of my friends have names that are double dactyls. Among them, Marjorie is the only one, so far as I know, whose childhood nickname was, in fact, “Bobbity.” So the poem basically wrote itself.]
==============================
XI
Bibbity bobbity
Linda B. Gregerson
Mistress of prosody,
Ovid, and pies,
Mulling o’er nuances
Caenorhabditian,
Stirs, as Balboa once,
With wild surmise.
[Note: Linda Gregerson, a real poet and expert baker, has published a cycle of poems based on tales from Ovid. One of my favorites among her poems turns upon the hermaphrodite worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, a staple pillar of aging research. Keats thought that “stout Cortez” reacted to his first view of the Pacific with wild surmise, but it was actually stout Balboa, not Cortez, a good thing since the double dactyl, a harsh mistress, required an extra syllable.]
==============================
Bibbity bobbity
Linda B. Gregerson
Mistress of prosody,
Ovid, and pies,
Mulling o’er nuances
Caenorhabditian,
Stirs, as Balboa once,
With wild surmise.
[Note: Linda Gregerson, a real poet and expert baker, has published a cycle of poems based on tales from Ovid. One of my favorites among her poems turns upon the hermaphrodite worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, a staple pillar of aging research. Keats thought that “stout Cortez” reacted to his first view of the Pacific with wild surmise, but it was actually stout Balboa, not Cortez, a good thing since the double dactyl, a harsh mistress, required an extra syllable.]
==============================
XII
Bibbity bobbity
Calico's Cynthia,
Caenorhabitienne
Extraordinaire,
Bets Google's zillions that
Mini-hermaphrodites
Will carve a path to
Affordable Care.
[Note: Googling Calico and Cynthia Kenyon will get you where you need to go for this one. And the next one.]
Bibbity bobbity
Calico's Cynthia,
Caenorhabitienne
Extraordinaire,
Bets Google's zillions that
Mini-hermaphrodites
Will carve a path to
Affordable Care.
[Note: Googling Calico and Cynthia Kenyon will get you where you need to go for this one. And the next one.]
==============================
XIII
Bibbity bobbity
Calico's Cynthia
Caenorhabditienne,
Eerily spry,
Notes that her comma-shaped
Mini-hermaphrodites
Soaking up Dauer-ade™
Never say die.
==============================
XIV
Bibbity Bobbity
Cheryl L. Cassidy
Like namesake Hopalong
Gallops all day;
Then, to impress awe-struck
Neo-equestrians
Rears up, and shouts “Heigh ho,
Onyx, away!”
[Note: Ms. Cassidy, whose impressive horse is named Onyx, tried to teach me to ride a horse, with only modest success.]
==============================
XIII
Bibbity bobbity
Calico's Cynthia
Caenorhabditienne,
Eerily spry,
Notes that her comma-shaped
Mini-hermaphrodites
Soaking up Dauer-ade™
Never say die.
==============================
XIV
Bibbity Bobbity
Cheryl L. Cassidy
Like namesake Hopalong
Gallops all day;
Then, to impress awe-struck
Neo-equestrians
Rears up, and shouts “Heigh ho,
Onyx, away!”
[Note: Ms. Cassidy, whose impressive horse is named Onyx, tried to teach me to ride a horse, with only modest success.]
==============================
XV
Bibbity bobbity
Cheryl L. Cassidy
On faithful Onyx will
Gallop apace
Towards Phoebus’ lodging, then
Teleologically
Spin through 180 and
Trot back to base.
Bibbity bobbity
Cheryl L. Cassidy
On faithful Onyx will
Gallop apace
Towards Phoebus’ lodging, then
Teleologically
Spin through 180 and
Trot back to base.
==============================
XVI
Bibbity Bobbity
Amy J. Wagers, a
Parabioticist
Extraordinaire,
Now beefs her mice up with
Intra-abdominal
Cytokine shots; Capy-
Baras beware!
[Note: Dr. Wagers’s experiments using parabiosis suggested that a cytokine called GDF – growth and differentiation factor – from young mice could strengthen old mice. The capybara is the world’s largest rodent, weighing up to 140 pounds.]
==============================
XVI – Rebuttal
Bibbity bobbity
Dr. Marc Egerman
Notices GDF
Goes up, not down
And that an agonist,
Regeneration-wise,
Might not deserve big cash
Wagers this round.
[Note: Dr. Amy Wagers says GDF goes down with age, and GDF can fix aging problems. But Dr. Marc Egerman reported just the opposite. Stock prices for GDF start-ups see-sawed correspondingly.]
==============================
XVII (The Killifish Trilogy]
[In 2015 Anne Brunet and her students published a paper on the African Killifish, the shortest-lived vertebrate, using the new CRISPR technology to fiddle with their telomeres to modify their aging and lifespan.].
Bibbity bobbity
African Killifish
Not quite as mean as their
Nickname implies
Suffer with patience their
Telomerectomies
Hoping and praying they
Won't die like flies.
====================================
Bibbity bobbity
African Killifish
Not quite as vicious as
One might expect
Show their proud backbones to
S. cerevisiae,
Gulp down some CRISPR and
Ask for respect.
====================================
Higgledy piggledy
African Killifish
Not as warm-blooded as
Some folks might wish
Grasp for the laurels of
Saccharomyces, but
GMO sushi are
Still, sadly, fish.
==============================
XVI
Bibbity Bobbity
Amy J. Wagers, a
Parabioticist
Extraordinaire,
Now beefs her mice up with
Intra-abdominal
Cytokine shots; Capy-
Baras beware!
[Note: Dr. Wagers’s experiments using parabiosis suggested that a cytokine called GDF – growth and differentiation factor – from young mice could strengthen old mice. The capybara is the world’s largest rodent, weighing up to 140 pounds.]
==============================
XVI – Rebuttal
Bibbity bobbity
Dr. Marc Egerman
Notices GDF
Goes up, not down
And that an agonist,
Regeneration-wise,
Might not deserve big cash
Wagers this round.
[Note: Dr. Amy Wagers says GDF goes down with age, and GDF can fix aging problems. But Dr. Marc Egerman reported just the opposite. Stock prices for GDF start-ups see-sawed correspondingly.]
==============================
XVII (The Killifish Trilogy]
[In 2015 Anne Brunet and her students published a paper on the African Killifish, the shortest-lived vertebrate, using the new CRISPR technology to fiddle with their telomeres to modify their aging and lifespan.].
Bibbity bobbity
African Killifish
Not quite as mean as their
Nickname implies
Suffer with patience their
Telomerectomies
Hoping and praying they
Won't die like flies.
====================================
Bibbity bobbity
African Killifish
Not quite as vicious as
One might expect
Show their proud backbones to
S. cerevisiae,
Gulp down some CRISPR and
Ask for respect.
====================================
Higgledy piggledy
African Killifish
Not as warm-blooded as
Some folks might wish
Grasp for the laurels of
Saccharomyces, but
GMO sushi are
Still, sadly, fish.
==============================
XIX [The Paul Glenn Trilogy]
[Note: Paul Glenn, through the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, is a major source of private support for basic research in aging, partly through the establishment of Paul F. Glenn research centers at a dozen universities. Our goal is to find drugs that stop aging and provide them to Paul (among others), so we will all stay healthy a lot longer. If you don’t know who Beresford-Tipton is, you could consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire.]
Bibbity Bobbity
Paul F. Glenn Institutes,
Each one atop its own
Fountain of Youth,
Note that their patron now
Semi-mysteriously
No longer looks quite as
Long in the tooth.
====================================
Bibbity Bobbity
Glenn Found. for Med. Research
Spurring young scientists
Forth to the Quest,
Picks its awardees, then
Beresford Tipton-like
Moves to the shadows and
Hopes for the best.
====================================
Bibbity Bobbity
Dr. Methuselah
(Otherwise known as the
Dapper Paul Glenn)
Hopes his investments in
Gerontological
Ventures will all pay off;
V'imru "amen."