GENOME ISLAND:  Is it trance or blues or country?  It’s not clear what the category is, but that restful musical phrase or that upbeat tempo is the sound of proteins set to music.

“This is an area I’ve been interested in for quite a few years, because of similarities between protein compositions and musical compositions,” Max Chatnoir told 28 residents recently.  Chatnoir (Dr. Mary Ann Clark) is Professor of Biology at Texas Wesleyan University.  

Douglas Hofstadter began exploring the themes of music and proteins in 1980.  Susumo Ohno was the first to publish a score based on phosphoglycerate kinase in the journal Immunogenetics.

“Well, first, it’s just fun to hear what a protein might sound like,” Chatnoir said.  “Second, I think it gives people who don’t spend a lot of time thinking about proteins an appreciation of the patterns and complexities of their structure.”

Chatnoir went on to explain.  “Proteins have a primary structure that consists of a string of amino acids.  In the genetics data bases, each amino acid is represented by a letter from the English alphabet.  If you just read one of these [when you read a textual representation of it], it looks like gibberish, because the patterns that you want to look for are familiar words. But if you convert it to sounds, you can start to hear patterns.”

Musical samples were then played of several different proteins.  These and many others are available in mp3 format at http://whozoo.org/mac/Music/samples.htm

“Because we communicate by speech, our ears are very sensitive to sound patterns, and we can hear patterns we might not be able to see in text,” Chatnoir said.  “Proteins also have higher levels of structure.  Secondary structure: repetitious kinds of folding patterns like alpha helix.  Primary structure—amino acid sequence—is represented by the specific pitches assigned to each amino acid. Pitches are assigned by amino acid solubility.  More hydrophobic—less water soluble—amino acids have lower pitches.  More hydrophilic—more water soluble—amino acids have higher pitches.”

“Amino acids are the subunits that compose proteins. They would be analogous to letters in a long word. There are 20 different amino acids and they have different properties, different sizes, different charges, different solubilities.”

“You’ll hear the amino acids and also the DNA codons that represent each of the amino acids when you play the