biology

Protein music

Protein music is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Protein music rather than just read about it. In short: Protein music or, more broadly, genetic music (including DNA music) is a musical technique where music is composed by converting protein sequences or DNA sequences to musical notes. The earliest published references to genetic music in the scientific literature include a short correspondence by Hayashi and Munakata in Nature in 1984, a publication by geneticist Susumu Ohno and Midori Ohno (his wife and a musician) i…

Key takeaways

Protein music belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Protein music to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Protein music from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Protein music or, more broadly, genetic music (including DNA music) is a musical technique where music is composed by converting protein sequences or DNA sequences to musical notes. The earliest published references to genetic music in the scientific literature include a short correspondence by Hayashi and Munakata in Nature in 1984, a publication by geneticist Susumu Ohno and Midori Ohno (his wife and a musician) in Immunogenetics, and a paper in the journal Bioinformatics (then called Computer Applications in the Biosciences) co-authored by Ross D. King and Colin Angus (a member of the British psychedelic band The Shamen) in 1996, Shortly before the King and Angus publication the French physicist and composer Joël Sternheimer (a singer also known by his stage name, Évariste) applied for a patent to use protein music to affect protein synthesis. The idea that music can affect protein synthesis is generally viewed as pseudoscientific by the molecular biology community, although the methods proposed by Sternheimer form the basis for software called Proteodyne. Applications for genetic music proposed in the scientific literature include aids to memorization and education.

Theory The idea that genes and music exhibit similarities was noted even earlier than the scientific publications in the area by Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter even proposes that meaning is constructed in protein and in music. The ideas that supports the possibility of creating harmonic musics using this method are:

The repetition process governs both the musical composition and the DNA sequence construction. The conformations and energetics of the protein secondary and tertiary structures at the atomic level. See also for full compositions made using this concept. Pink noise (the correlation structure "1/f spectra") have been found in both musical signals and DNA sequences. Models with duplication and mutation operations, such as the "expansion-modification model" are able to generate sequences with 1/f spectra. When DNA sequences are converted to music, it sounds musical. Human Genome Project has revealed similar genetic themes not only between species, but also between proteins. Musical renditions of DNA and proteins is not only a music composition method, but also a technique for studying genetic sequences. Music is a way of representing sequential relationships in a type of informational string to which the human ear is keenly attuned. The analytic and educational potential of using music to represent genetic patterns has been recognized from secondary school to university level.

Susumu Ohno and DNA music Susumu Ohno, one of the referents in the development of protein music, proposed in the early 80s that repetition is a fundamental to the evolution of proteins. This idea was fundamental to his notion that the repetition in biological sequences would have parallels in music composition, leading Ohno to state that the "...all-pervasive principle of repetitious recurrence governs not only coding sequence construction but also human endeavor in musical composition." By implementing the concept of musical transformation in DNA sequences, and changing the fragments into musical scores, researchers are allowed to explore the repetitions in the sequences in terms of musical periodicities. The approach consists of assigning musical notes to nucleotide sequences, unveiling hidden patterns of relationship within genetic coding. Music and DNA share similarities in their structure by exhibiting repeating units and motifs.

Musical Patterns Periodicities and the principle of repetitious recurrences govern many aspects of life on this earth, including musical compositions and coding base sequences in genomes. This inherent similarity resulted in the effort to interconvert the two. One of music's uses, from its creation by the primitive Homo sapiens to the modern day, is as a time-keeping device. In Ohno's rendition, a space and a line on the octave scale are assigned to each base, A, G, T, and C. His work compares and identifies parallels in genomic sequences and notable music from the early Baroque and Romantic periods. Beyond the parallels that can be found rhythmically in music and peptide sequences, musical patterns can be a valuable tool for identifying sequence patterns of interest. For example, work done by Robert P. Bywater and Jonathan N. Middleton has used melody generation software to identify protein folds from sequence data.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Protein music

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Protein music claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Protein music before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Protein music ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Protein music

In research: Protein music appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Protein music in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Protein music is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Experimental music genres, Musical techniques, Proteins, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Protein music outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Protein music in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Protein music means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Protein music out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Protein music in simple terms?

Why does Protein music matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Protein music?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Protein music.