Science shortcuts Memes

In the cutthroat world of amino acid notation, efficiency reigns supreme. Why waste precious milliseconds writing "Methionine" when "M" gets the job done? Meanwhile, "Lysine" enthusiasts are clearly overcompensating for something. Single-letter codes save approximately 0.4 calories of finger movement energy per use—multiply that by a genome annotation project and you've saved enough ATP to power a bacterial flagellum for nearly 3 microseconds. Revolutionary.