DNA / Protein / Math Music Project
Your answers will depend on your ability to recognize patterns of sound and apply them. It is not known whether this application of music will actually be a useful analytical tool to identify different proteins, dna and active sites, and whether or not these musical selections are good tests of the question. These are the types of questions that science commonly deals with. Scientists progressively experiment with new approaches and refine their tests until clear answers emerge.
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(1) The unknown music you listened to actually came from this animal. |
| (2) Trypsin proteases have certain common characteristics.
The active site of the trypsin family of serine proteases is generally
noted to define the family's biological activity on the following basis:
"The catalytic activity of the serine proteases from the trypsin family is provided by a charge relay system involving an aspartic acid residue hydrogen- bonded to a histidine, which itself is hydrogen-bonded to a serine. The sequences in the vicinity of the active site serine and histidine residues are well conserved in this family of proteases [1]. " http://expasy.hcuge.ch/cgi-bin/get-prodoc-entry?PDOC00124 Information on the active site of human trypsin: http://expasy.hcuge.ch/cgi-bin/get-sprot-entry?P07478 Information on the active site of mouse trypsin: http://expasy.hcuge.ch/cgi-bin/get-sprot-entry?P07146 The unknown music was composed from 50 amino acid residues: 171-220, including serine 200, the defining residue for the active site. The human and mouse music were each composed from 246 residues. |
Reporting on your listening experience can assist in a rough test of the following hypothesis:
Since there apparently is structure to music produced from biological molecules, then this musical structure is a reflection of the molecule's structural and biochemical properties. It should therefore be possible to conceptualize and learn a great deal about biological and other molecules from "hearing" their intrinsic signatures and applying the information like any visualization.
Please briefly describe your experience in an e-mail to: rrusay@socrates.berkeley,edu
If there are a significant number of e-mail reponses which encourage further Web-based study, a formal research plan and proposal will be developed. You will be kept informed and involved in the process if you choose to participate. Thank you.
