elfination

Two years ago, when I was in school at NSU in Oklahoma, and Barrett was working five-days-a-week in Oklahoma City, I was studying genetics. Barrett came home one weekend and found me sitting on the couch, schoolbooks and notes and beads strewn all over the coffee table. I was busy stringing small glass beads on a wire.

“Are you studying?? or are you playing with beads,” he asked me.
“Both.”
“They would seem to be mutually exclusive.”
I recall holding up the little thing I’d been working on. “No. See? Ribose. I’m doing both.”

I recall him staring at me funny then huffing a little and walking off. I thought about making another one and making earrings out of them, but I didn’t.

Well, it’s 2010, I’m taking Microbiology, and my professor wants us to memorize the structure of Adenosine Triphosphate. “It’s just adenine and ribose and three phosphate groups,” he reassured us. “It’ll be on the exam.” Last night… I opened up my beads. YES, I brought them to school with me, because they’re useful!! I went through a lot of wire, almost all of my tiny blue optic beads (Hydrogen), a bunch of medium-size black optic beads (Carbon), a few light blue ones (Nitrogen), a bunch of pink ones (Oxygen), and three big fat purple ones (Phosphorus). This created a beautiful rendering of ATP, though slightly too big to stick on an earring.

With some adjustment, a few extra beads, and a clasp, it makes a fabulous bracelet, though.

My deoxyribose (which we all know is just ribose without an Oxygen at Carbon 2, right?) is earring-sized. I put together an Alanine (the smallest, simplest amino acid), and it’s also a lovely earring.

I am chagrined to discover, upon review, that my ATP is actually missing two Hydrogen beads… I missed adding them at two of the double-bonded carbons in the double-ring structure. The rest is right, though. Technically, the Hydrogens are simply assumed, but if I added them to all the other Carbons, I ought to have added them to these two also. Maybe I can fix it later.

–Em