User:Dante Alighieri/Amino acid mnemonic

Because I'm a big dork, I made myself a mnemonic aid when I was taking Biology in high school. The idea was to help me remember the 20 important amino acids.

For the record, here is the list of them:


 * 1) alanine - ala
 * 2) arginine - arg
 * 3) asparagine - asn
 * 4) aspartic acid - asp
 * 5) cysteine - cys
 * 6) glutamine - gln
 * 7) glutamic acid - glu
 * 8) glycine - gly
 * 9) histidine - his
 * 10) isoleucine - ile
 * 11) leucine - leu
 * 12) lysine - lys
 * 13) methionine - met
 * 14) phenylalanine - phe
 * 15) proline - pro
 * 16) serine - ser
 * 17) threonine - thr
 * 18) tryptophan - trp
 * 19) tyrosine - tyr
 * 20) valine - val

Now, my mnemonic helped ME. The idea was that it should paint a very vivid image, and thus be easy to remember the mnemonic. Then the mnemonic itself needed to make me remember all the amino acids. So, my mnemonic goes as follows:

Large rhinoceroses stampeded swiftly through the Sistine Chapel, underneath a yellow umbrella, hitting isolated lovely lemon meringue pies, put ceaselessly together through a tireless vigil.

Quite a vivid image, don't you agree? I wikilinked some of the terms, just for fun, I didn't have wikilinks in my original mnemonic, obviously.

Anyway, it's not obvious how it works, so I'll explain. The idea was to list them alphabetically, and they all are, at least by first letter anyway. There were four 'A' amino acids, so I dropped the 'A' from each for memorization purposes and used the next letter, this gave me L, R, S, and S (large rhinoceroses stampeded swiftly). Next came Cysteine, which is a homonym (in my dialect) with Sistine. So far so good. Next came three 'G's. Again I chopped the G. This wasn't enough, however, since they are all 'GL's. So I also dropped the L. This left me with U U Y (underneath umbrella yellow), I took creative license and rearranged yellow and umbrella... the G's are all still in the right general place. Histidine is next (hitting) followed by Isoleucine, Leucine, and Lysine (isolate lovely lemon). Methionine and Phenylalanine come next (meringue pie). Proline and Serine follow (put ceaselessly) and I cheated a bit with Serine, but it's an 'S'-sounding-'C', not a 'K'-sounding-'C'. Threonine, Tryptophan, Tyrosine, and Valine round out the end (through together tireless vigil) and again I switched the order, this time through and together, because THReonine and THRough share the same initial sound. In any event, that's my mnemonic.

Note: This mnemonic is explicitly NOT release under the GNU FDL and is copyright by me. It's use here is claimed to be fair use and is not indicative of any express or implied grant of copyright to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, or anyone else.

--Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:08, May 14, 2004 (UTC)