The Sounds of Life
L. Van
Warren
Warren Design Vision
July 11, 1999
The brain consists of approximately 100 billion nerve cells. If you include cells that perform other duties, structural support, myelin insulation, vascularization, etc. there are about a trillion cells in the human brain. The average brain weighs between 1300 and 1400 grams (about 3 pounds). There are about 100 trillion cells in the human body. Each body cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, one from each parent. Each chromosome is a long section of folded DNA. Subsections of the DNA along each chromosome consist of genes of which there are about 100,000. Each gene carries the information required to synthesize a single protein [Lewin]. DNA is made by joining sequences of four nucleic acids, called C, T, A and G, or CTAG for short. RNA, which is used to transcribe genetic information, consists of thsame nucleic acids, excepting U which is substituted for T. UCAG is mnemonic for the RNA alphabet.
Triplets of the symbols U, C, A and G are used to direct protein synthesis. Proteins are typically chains of several hundred amino acids joined together by the removal of a water molecule shared between them in a process called condensation. There are 64 possible UCAG triplets, called codons. 61 UCAG combinations code for 20 amino acids, 3 of these are STOP signs. The amino acids are labeled A C D E F G H I K L M N P Q R S T V W Y. You can click on these letters to see their chemical structures. We will use lower case letters to denote RNA "ucag" bases and upper case letters to denote the 20 amino acids. The 64 possible codons are shown below. ALL are used in protein synthesis.
Triplet Codon Table
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u
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c
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a
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g
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u
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c
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a
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g
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Sounding out shape
So if we wanted to "hear" DNA, we could associate a tone with each of c, t, a, or g, and likewise with RNA.
If we wanted to "hear"
the sound of protein syntheis we would have a piano keyset with four keys.
We would press three keys, hearing their sounds, and then the sound of the
amino acid that was transcribed would appear in a fourth tone. This fourth
tone could be any of twenty tones, but the first three tones would be any
of three with the following exceptions.
The first letter of each codon is the most significant, so it might be represented
by a low note.
The second letter of each codon is the next most significant, so it might
be represented by a higher note, of slightly less volume. The third note would
be the least, and is sometimes not significant at all, so it would be represented
by a still quieter third note.
Consider the following, if we typed the string, "uuu" into the protein
player, we might hear
a chord of the three notes, each exactly one octave apart. The lowest note
would be the loudest, and the highest note would be the quietest. We will
map first triplet symbol to the lower octave by uppercase bold, e.g. C,
the second codon symbol will get the next octave up, denoted by lowercase
bold (c), the third and least significant codon symbol will get the
third octave and is denoted by lowercase plain (c). The symbol set of ucag
will be mapped to the musical notes, c, d, e and g, so that chorded protein
patterns will "come together" in a recognizable way. "Hold
him in your armchair you can hear his disease".
Triplet Chord Table
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u ->c
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c->d
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a->e
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g->g
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u->C
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c->D
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a->E
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g->G
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The fourth note of each triplet is one of the remaining twenty notes assigned to the amino acids.
This application initially
needs a window into which to dump the DNA/RNA string.
It needs a table where the ctag, ucag and a-y mapping assignments are located.
The stop codes cause the music to stop.
It needs a play and reverse button. That is all for version one.
Sounding out relationships
When a protein is in a solute field, or is near another protein, each amino acid can be treated as a sound generator. The amino acid is given a unique chord based on its structure. As the protein is moved around, those amino acids closer to the viewer dominate the sound. This enables multiple proteins to be in the scene.