By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

Many politicians are often a detriment to scientific advancement. Now, politicians can use science to the detriment of advancing legislation…using of course a most titanic word. It shows great promise in the realm of filibusters and gridlock. 

The magic word is Titin.

Titin /ˈtaɪtɪn/, also known as connectin, is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the TTN gene. Titin is a giant protein, greater than 1 µm in length, that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle. It is composed of 244 individually folded protein domains connected by unstructured peptide sequences. How can this be a useful tool of politicians? It is only a matter of expansion of Titin to its full chemical name that presents the opportunity to quash most debate. A typical manifestation of what can become a powerful English sentence using this word might be concatenated as follows:

“[Full chemical name for titin], [full chemical name for titin], parting is such sorrow, that I shall say [full chemical name for titin] till it be morrow.”

Of course, one could speak it slowly for “easier understanding” and repeating this until collapse.

What is [Full chemical name for titin]? Well for the purpose of brevity the full chemical name of the human canonical form of titin is most easily described as having 189,819 letters: over 2,372 lines of typing.  It is renowned for being the longest scientific word in the English. Expanding the sentence in the above paragraph using the full chemical name would constitute over half a million letters, and well suited for congressional usage. Prepare yourself, the word is quite a doozy.
Continue reading “Politics 405: Yes, You Can Filibuster With One Sentence” →