A News Sonnet A Day for April 2010: 8

I've set myself a goal for National Poetry Month this year: Compose a sonnet based on a science-themed news story each day.

Today's installment takes its cue from "Gut bacteria in Japanese people borrowed sushi-digesting genes from ocean bacteria" by Ed Yong in Discover.

Gut Instinct

Bacteria will sometimes share a gene
That fosters their ability to thrive.
One day land lubber borrowed from marine
The means to use raw seaweed to survive.

It happened in a warm digestive tract.
Zobellia and B.plebeius met
Over a bite of sushi. And the fact
That nori wasn't cooked, far from a threat,

Made good nutrition even more a breeze
And changed intestine flora, don't know when --
Enabling the bowels of Japanese
To best the gut of an American.

Passed down, much like the tales of samurai,
They munch where algae carbohydrates lie.

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