Those of you who have read the history of matchmine will see reference to my brother the genetic engineer. In case you didn’t catch it, the germination for what we’re doing started with a conversation between Mark and I back in 1996. The spark occurred soon after he built his in-car MP3 player (yes, back in ‘96) out of a laptop loaded with Linux mounted in his trunk (using a Nintendo controller mounted on the dash as in interface). I could go on about that, but it wouldn’t be germane to this particular post.

That’s all just background to understand (to some small degree) the tinkering noodle inside his head. He’s now coupled his interest in music with his PhD in cell molecular biology in his latest side project, “Radio Free Genome”. He’s worked out a way to convert DNA into music that’s actually quite listenable. He did it by identifying some simple rules:

• Directly map each DNA base to eighth notes in middle ‘C’.
• Added a “break” at the start and end of each protein translation.
• Define the harmony from the structural characteristics of the protein sequence.
• Amina acid class changes signal chord changes.
• The DNA bases within each codon define the melody as:
  • A = up an interval
  • T = down an interval
  • G = stay
  • C = rest
• Intervals defined by the current chord.

Once all the rules are written, all that’s left is to feed it some DNA. The most illustrative piece was created using the coding region of alcohol dehydrogenase. You can hear the final outcome in this MP3.

And just for fun, I checked the machmine Discovery Platform for similar music and came back with:

1.2.4/100:0.583333333; 1.2.4/102:0.823808197; 1.2.4/114:0.11489899; 1.2.4/117:0.821072797; 1.2.4/124:0.016296296; 1.2.4/133:0.683333333; 1.2.4/135:0.044620811; 1.2.4/139:0.331046252; 1.2.4/143:0.081273808; 1.2.4/151:0.020740741; 1.2.4/159:0.029100529; 1.2.4/164:0.40479798; 1.2.4/168:0.368333333; 1.2.4/169:0.1; 1.2.4/41:0.43526799; 1.2.4/42:0.258887263; 1.2.4/83:0.1; 1.2.4/85:0.375121328; 1.2.4/88:0.054320988; 1.2.4/94:0.796289579;

Nifty, but not terribly helpful unless you’re a machine. In English, this would translate into, “A complex, experimental, and calming Trance track that was influenced by Jungle-based Techno.”

If you’re interested in making your own musical DNA, check out the Radio Free Genome Project. He’s released the software to the open source community. It’d be interesting to put together a playlist of DNA music if you get around to trying it out for yourself.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.