Doctoral dance update

We previously mentioned the "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, the first round of which has since concluded. Suzanne Winter of BioTechniques.com gives us an update in her article "Shake your groove thing," which focuses on the winner in the chemistry category, Maureen McKeague of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Since this is above all a science music blog, we should note the central role of music in the winning dance:

McKeague's thesis dance begins with a lonely homocystine target, dancing by herself to Celine Dion's "Alone" before being incubated with DNA strands that are possible aptamers. The dancers demonstrate binding affinity by keeping apace of the aerobic homocystine as she dances to Vanilla Fudge's "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and surviving a urea wash as "Night on Bald Mountain" plays menacingly in the background. In the true gem of the video, the strands then undergo PCR, led by a jiving Taq DNA polymerase molecule to the tune of Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance." Finally, natural selection takes its toll as mismatched aptamers peel off the dance group to Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and the remaining aptamers celebrate their binding affinity with Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance."

The charming article is marred by a number of factual errors. McKeague's small-molecule target is homocysteine, not homocystine. In addition, most of the songs mentioned above appear to be attributed to the wrong artists. The version of "Alone" used in the dance sounds to my ears like the original one recorded by Heart, not Celine Dion's cover. Conversely, "The Safety Dance" was originally recorded by Men Without Hats, but the dance includes a different version. And the "You Keep Me Hangin' On" heard here is not from Vanilla Fudge -- maybe Kim Wilde?

A "step" beyond science songs

One of my favorite science blogs is The World's Fair. As its name implies, it covers a diverse range of topics, but one recent post of possible interest to our readers was Dance Your Ph.D.: One Month till the Duedate! This post is but one of many in the blog's category of The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building.

To me, conveying scientific content through song seems challenging; doing so through dance seems really challenging. I applaud those who are willing to give it a shot, though, and I imagine that the effect can be almost magical under the right circumstances. My Ph.D. adviser, for instance, met the woman who would later become his wife at a dance performance designed to illustrate how a nuclear reactor worked, or something like that. He impressed her by explaining the scientific basis of the various dance moves, and a chain reaction ensued....