SCIENTISTS COVERT THE SEQUENCE OF PROTIENS INTO MUSIC
Thought this article might be of interest...just goes to show that consciousness
keeps presenting old knowledge(mantra-yantra)in new ways to keep the self
engaged....
http://www.mimg.ucla.edu/faculty/miller_jh/gene2music/examples.html Scientists convert the sequence of proteins into music
UCLA molecular biologists have turned protein sequences into original
compositions of classical music.
"We converted the sequence of proteins into music and can get an auditory
signal for every protein," said Jeffrey H. Miller, distinguished professor of
microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, and a member of UCLA's
Molecular Biology Institute. "Every protein will have its unique auditory
signature because every protein has a unique sequence. You can hear the
sequence of the protein."
"We assigned a chord to each amino acid," said Rie Takahashi, a UCLA research
assistant and an award-winning, classically trained piano player. "We want to
see if we can hear patterns within the music, as opposed to looking at the
letters of an amino acid or protein sequence. We can listen to a protein, as
opposed to just looking at it."
The building blocks of proteins are linear sequences of 20 different amino
acids. Assigning one note for each amino acid therefore results in a 20-note
scale.
"A 20-note scale is too large a range," Takahashi said. "You need a reduced
scale, so we paired similar amino acids together and used chords and chord
variations for each amino acid. We used each component of the music to
indicate a specific characteristic of the protein. We are faithful in the
conversion from the sequence to the music. The rhythm is dictated by the
protein sequence."
Gene2music
Examples of protein music based on our final algorithm can be heard and viewed
below. With respect to recognizing repeating patterns in the protein music
sequences, we show two main examples: the Huntingtin and LacY permease
proteins. Huntington's disease is an example of a triplet repeat disorder in
which an expansion of a repeated glutamine sequence causes the protein to lose
its proper function. Such an expansion leads to a late-onset neurological
disorder. The LacY permease protein spans the membrane of Escherichia coli and
has a distinct hydrophobic region of phenylalanines. This sequence facilitates
the protein to move through the bacterial membrane. In the Huntingtin example,
one can hear an obvious repeated pattern of glutamines and polyprolines, and
this pattern can be compared to the less obvious repeated pattern of
phenylalanines heard in the LacY permease. See Project Evolution for a
description of our coding optimization.
It is important to note that our coding assignment can be reversed with
respect to tonal assignments as well as rhythm. For example, the lower notes
can be assigned to the hydrophilic amino acids rather than the hydrophobic. We
show examples of the human ThyA protein using reverse coding below.
