Thursday, April 30, 2009

Music from H1N1?

Stephan Zielinski, 41, is not a biochemist or a professional musician, but a writer, photographer, computer programmer, and blogger who creates music in his spare time. He's fascinated that, even though biologists can map the genome of the virus and predict what the hemagglutinin protein looks like, the human body still cannot distinguish it as the "bad guy"; at least, not until there's a vaccine.
The virus has the classification H1N1 because it includes two key viral proteins, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). Zielinski took the genetic sequence of a variant of hemagglutinin and created a computer algorithm to turn it into music.

MKAILVVMLYTFATANADTLCIGYHANNSTDTVDTVLEKNVTVTHSVNLLEDKHNGKLCK

LRGVAPLHLGKCNIAGWILGNPECESLSTASSWSYIVETSSSDNGTCYPGDFIDYEELREQLS

SVSSFERFEIFPKTSSWPNHDSNKGVTAACPHAGAKSFYKNLIWLVKKGNSYPKLSKSYIND

KGKEVLVLWGIHHPSTSADQQSLYQNADAYVFVGSSRYSKKFKPEIAIRPKVRDQEGRMNY

YWTLVEPGDKITFEATGNLVVPRYAFAMERNAGSGIIISDTPVHDCNTTCQTPKGAINTSLP

FQNIHPITIGKCPKYVKSTKLRLATGLRNVPSIQSRGLFGAIAGFIEGGWTGMVDGWYGYH

HQNEQGSGYAADLKSTQNAIDEITNKVNSVIEKMNTQFTAVGKEFNHLEKRIENLNKKVDD

GFLDIWTYNAELLVLLENERTLDYHDSNVKNLYEKVRSQLKNNAKEIGNGCFEFYHKCDNT

CMESVKNGTYDYPKYSEEAKLNREEIDGVKLESTRIYQILAIYSTVASSLVLVVSLGAISFWM

CSNGSLQCRICI

"Although the map is there and you can even make a song out of it, we can't explain it to these itty bitty little cells in body," he said.
Listen to his composition here.

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