In celebration of International Strange Music Day on Monday 24 August, I have produced a musical composition using the computer-generated musical notes from the coronavirus genome.
I'm an academic at Western Sydney University in the School of Science and was a professional musician before completing my PhD in molecular biology. My two passions are music and molecular biology. For many years, I kept these interests separate - but in recent years I found the opportunity to meld the two together using Sonification: which is the process of using audio to reveal the properties of some phenomena.
The computer generated audio that you see and hear in the video is described in this my preprint entitled 'Real-time audio and visual display of the Coronavirus genome' is available at
www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-30483/v1
This has been submitted to the journal BMC Bioinformatics and is under review.
Earlier in 2017, I published a study (also in BMC Bioinformatics), on how audio can be used to distinguish a gene sequence from repetitive DNA. This work 'An auditory display tool for DNA sequence analysis' is available here:
doi.org/10.1186/s12859-017-1632-x
DNA is a long, string-like molecule made up of repeating G, A, T and C bases. When you think about it, these bases can easily be converted into a long sequence of musical notes. By replicating the pattern of a DNA sequence in an audio format, I found that it’s possible to hear mutations in the gene sequence that might not be obvious by visual inspection alone.
I have continued to experiment with sonification - creating a wide range of musical renditions and melodies that convey the information content of a DNA sequence and more recently the coronavirus RNA sequence. I have twice performed at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts centre playing music inspired by the DNA sonification.
To celebration of International Strange Music Day I went into the studio to play drums with guitarist Mike Anderson and of course the music generated from the coronavirus genome. This is what we came up with..., to me, it sounds a little like ‘math rock’.
A video for this track is available on YouTube:
youtu.be/2sG9O300Oz0
released August 19, 2020
Mike Anderson - Guitar
Mark Temple - Drums
Sonified Coronavirus Genome - ToneSynth