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I received my BA in chemistry from the University of North Texas. I started my college career at the College at New Paltz, a State University of New York. There I pursued a music major. After one semester, I transferred to the University of Rhode Island (my home state). There I declared Chemistry as my major. Five semesters later, I moved to Texas and added biology as my minor.
The University of North Texas
The University of Rhode Island SUNY The College at New Paltz
In my cell biology class at UNT, the professor offered extra credit points on the final exam if you wrote a cell biology poem. I can't pass up a chance for free points, so I turned on my creative juices to create a poem about the process from a nerve impulse to the tightening of a muscle. Here it is:
An eerie silence then a roar and a rumble
Here comes a nerve impulse down the axon it tumbles
The depolarized plasma membrane of the terminal
Says, hey open the voltage gated calcium channels
With the concentration gradient calcium rushes into the cytosol
Into the synaptic cleft acetylcholine is released, but that’s not all
Acetylcholine binds to its receptor in the muscle membrane
Opening this ligand gated channel for sodium to drain
This causes voltage gated sodium channels to open, even more sodium enters,
this is insane!
The transverse tubules feel the rush and trigger calcium channels to open
Calcium ions escape from the sacroplasmic reticulum and bind to troponin
Tropomyosin molecules shift exposing the myosin binding sites
Now the little myosin heads can walk just right
Binding and releasing along the actin to make the muscle tight
