Our Research Updates in Archways give a snapshot of the Rice ARCHES Initiative researchers' current work, research progress, and future directions. Art & Science at the MOH Conference This month Dr....
Our “Project CHROMA Personnel” series in Archways highlights the key researchers behind the Rice ARCHES Initiative. Russell Ku This month Dr. Melia Bonomo from the Department of Bioengineering interviews...
Our “Project CHROMA Personnel” series in Archways highlights the key researchers behind the Rice ARCHES Initiative. Vincent Lai This month Vincent Lai, who previously worked with Project CHROMA as the...
Our Mini Review series in Archways does a brief dive into research topics at the intersection of the arts and health. Research on Music Therapy This month, Amara Anyanwu, a Research Assistant in the BMED Lab...
Our Mini Review series in Archways does a brief dive into research topics at the intersection of the arts and health. Research on Music Listening in Cochlear Implant Users This month, Dr. Melia Bonomo, a...
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Our third journal club is online! Feel free to join the discussion remotely in the comments below. One of our participants in Project CHROMA suggested the following research that combines science and music to study the coronavirus:
Vineeth Venugopal (2020) “Scientists have turned the structure of the coronavirus into music,” Science 10.1126/science.abc0657.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/scientists-have-turned-structure-coronavirus-music
Researchers at MIT have created a musical representation of the amino acid sequence and structure of the COVID-19 spike protein (based on protein data bank entry 6VSB published by Wrapp et al. 2020) using a technique known as sonification.
The team led by Markus Buehler transposed the vibrational frequencies of the 20 natural amino acids to an audible spectrum in order to assign a musical note to each amino acid, thus creating a 20-tone “amino acid scale.” To create the COVID-19 spike protein musical score, the notes were played on a Japanese koto. The volume and duration of each note were defined by the secondary and higher-order folded structure of the protein. Heat-induced molecular vibrations were represented by unique sounds as well. A neural network was then used to generate music compositions that captured the relationships between amino acid sequence and protein structure.
It’s apparently faster using this technique rather than traditional molecular dynamics modeling to search for sites where antibodies or drugs could bind on the viral protein — researchers simply have to compare the musical scores of the sonified structures.
This musical technique is also a great way to communicate the significance of protein sequences and their folded structure to the public!
Read more about this sonification method developed by the research team:
Chi-Hua Yu, Zhao Qin, Francisco J Martin-Martinez, and Markus J Buehler (2019) “A Self-Consistent Sonification Method to Translate Amino Acid Sequences into Musical Compositions and Application in Protein Design Using Artificial Intelligence,” ACS Nano, 13(7): 7471-7482.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b02180
There’s also an interactive phone app available for download on the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synth.aminoacidplayer
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