December 27, 2023

Lily Sharkey

11th Grade

Dominican Academy

Music is made of patterns - combinations of notes of different lengths arranged on a staff, coming together to create melodies. Patterns are vital in music; otherwise, the notes will lack structure and the result will be incoherent and confusing. Generally, notes are intentionally orchestrated to create these patterns, but can this process be reversed? Can scientists create a list of notes and use the music to find patterns in a sequence of DNA? This is where protein music comes in.

There are three kinds of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): coding, noncoding, and repeat. Coding DNA is the kind that determines what amino acids make up a protein. Repeat DNA has no function. Non-coding DNA, however, is more complicated. Non-coding DNA makes up 98% of a person’s DNA, and it doesn’t code for proteins. Among other functions, non-coding DNA makes up telomeres, which protect the end of chromosomes when they replicate, non-coding RNA genes, which control the expression of proteins, and regulatory elements, which control when genes are turned on and for how long. There is no clear correlation between the sequence of non-coding DNA and its function. Some portions of the DNA can change with no effect on the function while others cannot, for no clear reason. Testing these sequences to experimentally determine their functions is no small feat, as there can be as many as 50,000 base pairs of DNA. Using technology that converts DNA into sound, scientists can listen for patterns and correlate those patterns with functions. It can also allow scientists to analyze long segments of DNA in a much shorter time.

Protein music premiered in the 1980s by David Deamer, a biomolecular engineer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. When talking with a researcher, Deamer concluded that nucleotides are not different from musical notes. He began to compose melodies from these notes, arranged in a cassette named “DNA Suite.” The music was derived from DNA sequences from the human insulin gene and some bacteria.

Although some, like Deamer, make protein music for enjoyment, others are using music to advance scientific research. Mark Temple, a medical molecular biologist working in a cancer research lab at Sydney Western University in Australia, uses protein music to predict suitable DNA combinations to use when studying the effects of drugs on cancer. Temple assigned notes to the nucleotides to listen for outliers in the data points. Listening for patterns, Temple was able to decipher what drugs would have the most desirable outcome (harming cancer). He used sound to better identify patterns in the DNA in a way that was easier than looking at overwhelming pages of sequences.

Markus Buehler, a materials engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, theorizes that when a protein is turned into music, the addition of a few musical elements can improve the protein. Buchler has even reversed the process, turning Bach’s Goldberg into man-made proteins. However, at this time, when scientists turn music into a new protein, they are unable to specifically control what the protein does or what properties it has; experiments are still necessary to discover the function of the protein.

Long is investigating ways that the music she creates from proteins can be used as a form of music therapy. She is creating five musical compositions coded from the human antibodies that neutralize the coronavirus. Long hopes the music will help listeners relieve anxiety caused by the COVID pandemic by sonifying a strong immune system. At this time, no clinical trials have been conducted on the efficacy of Long’s protein music therapy. Whether DNA is turned into music for entertainment or to make breakthrough discoveries, the overlap of music and science is intriguing, and it can provide much insight into the analysis of biological material.