With the right computer program, proteins become pleasant music.
There are many surprising analogies betweenproteins, the basic building blocks of life, and musical notation.
While creating music based on proteinsisnt new, different musical styles and composition algorithms had yet to be explored.
The musical analogies of proteins
Proteinsare structured like folded chains.
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Protein chains can also fold into wavy and curved patterns with ups, downs, turns, and loops.
Likewise, music consists of sound waves of higher and lower pitches, with changing tempos and repeating motifs.
Music from this period also tends to have lighter and more graceful and emotive melodies.
Songs are usuallyhomophonic, meaning they follow a central melody with accompaniment.
These features allowed us to test out a greater range of notes in our protein-to-music mapping algorithm.
In this case, we chose to analyze features ofChopins Fantaisie-Impromptuto guide our development of the program.
A larger-sized amino acid, for instance, would have a shorter note length, and vice versa.
The resulting music is complex, with notable variations in pitch, loudness, and rhythm.
This also means that there are variations in musicality across the different pieces, and interesting patterns can emerge.
This can be further developed and applied to a wider variety of music styles, including pop and jazz.
Protein music is an example of how combining the biological and computational sciences can produce beautiful works of art.
This study was collaboratively developed with Nicole Tay, Fanxi Liu, Chaoxin Wang and Hui Zhang.
