The Music of Life
Understanding proteins is essential to understanding cellular biology, but difficult. Scientists often turn to analogy, and talk of the "building blocks" or the "alphabet of life," but biologist Mary Anne Clark at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth says she hears the proteins singing.
"Over a decade ago," Clark recalls, "I heard a colleague [on the music faculty] talk about composing. As he discussed how he went about selecting, modifying, and organizing musical themes, I was struck by the parallels between musical structure and the structure of proteins and the genes that encode them." Clark tried in vain to find a musicianóshe's a singer but not a composerówho could transform protein sequences into music for her.
In 1996 she discovered that John Dunn of Algorithmic Arts (http://algoart.com) had created a computer software program that could do it. With Dunn, Clark refined the "sonification of proteins" into a more sophisticated music than earlier efforts had promised. Clark took into account higher- level structural features of proteins, such as regions of helix formation and other folding patterns. This adds additional depth to the music.
Clark and Dunn wanted to convey something not only about the primary amino acid sequence and the folding patterns of proteins but also to make audible the esthetic patterning of nature's deep structureóthe goal was to create a CD of "art music."
Clark notes, for instance, that the music of the human protein hemoglobin and that of the globin in a tuatara, an exotic three-eyed lizard, are recognizably "variations on a theme." Although the similarities between the two sequences can be seen in their written records, they are more striking when heard. Clark uses amino acid solubilities to assign pitches to specific amino acids in the sequences, so that even when the absolute sequences vary, strings of adjacent amino acids that have the same solubility relationships will produce similar musical phrases.
"The tuatara would seem to have little in common with humans," Clark says, "but the similarities indicate that both proteins are variations on a theme that was in existence before the divergence of the mammalian and reptile lineages 200 million years ago. Other variations of beta-globin can be found in Australian ghost bats, Brazilian tapirs, Kenyan clawed frogs, Antarctic dragon fish, and Emperor penguins. Although the beta-globin sequences aren't identical, they all would be recognizable as variations on a theme if converted to music."
Clark imagines the audio CD she and Dunn are producing will be a valuable teaching tool for students studying genetics or protein chemistry. Samples from the forthcoming CD can be heard at Clark's web site, http://www.startext.net/homes/macclark/Music/musicpag.htm. Clark and Dunn also recently published an article describing the technical details of her work in Leonardo, the MIT Press on-line journal, http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/articles/articles.html.
Contact Mary Ann Clark at Texas Wesleyan University at 817-531-4896, or try Sherrie Drakeford in the University news office at 817-531-4400.
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