Biologists have converted protein sequences into classical
music in an attempt to help vision-impaired scientists
and boost the popularity of genomic biology. New research
published today in the open access journal of Genome Biology
describes how researchers have found a way to present
human proteins as musical notes.
Rie Takahashi and Jeffrey H. Miller from the University
of California, Los Angeles, USA, have so far transcribed
segments of two human proteins into music. But to make
their melodies more pleasing on the ear, they had first
to overcome a few problems - how to incorporate rhythm,
and how to cram the 20 standard amino acids (the building
blocks of proteins) into just 13 notes.
The duo focus on codons - sets of three adjacent bases
that code for particular amino acids. They decided to
include four different note durations with codons that
appear more frequently transcribed into longer notes than
those which appear less often.
Individual amino acids are expressed as chords, in which
similar amino acids are paired. For example, the amino
acids tyrosine and phenylalanine are both assigned a G
major chord, but they can be distinguished because the
notes in the chord are arranged differently. This means
the resulting music has a 20 note range spanning over
2 octaves, but with just 13 base notes. The team find
their music more melodic and less 'jumpy' than previous
attempts, which have focussed on DNA sequences and protein
folding, and hence closer to the musical depth of popular
compositions.
They are currently piloting a computer program, written
by a collaborator Frank Pettit, which uses their translation
rules to convert amino acids into music and hope it will
speed up the translation of large segments of genomes.
Further examples of converted proteins and the computer
program are accessible
for online use. The browser allows anyone to send
in a sequence coding for a protein that is then converted
into music and returned to the inquirer as a midi file.
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This article first appeared in on Huliq.com
Their website can be found at www.huliq.com
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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Biologists have converted protein sequences into classical
music in an attempt to help vision-impaired scientists
and boost the popularity of genomic biology. New research
published today in the open access journal of Genome Biology
describes how researchers have found a way to present
human proteins as musical notes.