ambience: synthesized musical interpretation of the protein, Prion.
In the hands of biologist turned composer, the building blocks of life become musical scores. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. All living things are made up of proteins. Each protein molecule, is, in turn, made of amino acids. Mary Ann Clark, a musician and a professor of Biology at Texas Wesleyan University, has found a way of translating each sequence of amino acids into a sequence of musical notes.
“Well, I think one interesting question is when we write this music, you know, who’s the composer? Well, the protein is the composer. Nature is the composer. And I guess we’re the arrangers.”
Among other things, these sequences give us audible clues about the similarities between different species.
“There’s this wonderful line in Kipling’s The Jungle Book. And it’s the greeting that one animal gives to another when they meet in the forest, and they say something like this, We are one blood, brother — thou and I.’ And when I listen to, say, the beta globins of four different species playing together and hearing how much alike they are, I get a very, very visceral sense of the truth of that statement. We are of one blood. All organisms are related to one another. And all life springs from a sort of common tune, and that tune has been elaborated over millions and millions of years to the variety of music that modern species now play.”
To hear about our new CD, please visit pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.