Abstract

This composition is based on musical scores generated by software we developed that maps DNA sequences into musical notation. This particular example converts genes responsible for photosynthesis (photosystem II) found on the plastid of a carex siderosticta plant. We then had that score performed on two violins. We focused on the coding of the photosystem genes. However, the development of the software means that one could quickly convert any of the over 100 million individual sequences in GenBank into a musical score.
The software we developed parses FASTA nucleotide coding sequence files, and maps these into a musical composition. The algorithm maps each of the 20 amino acids onto specific pitches and each codon synonym onto duration for those pitches. The mapping is listed in Table 1. We used quartertones to be able to keep the results inside an octave. Rests at the end of a bar are added to create an 8/4 time signature – each amino acid note duration is based on which codon synonym appears in the sequence. The rests are added to avoid having to split notes across a bar. Our program writes out the results into two musical score files, one for the genes on each of the two strands of DNA. The resulting files use Lilypond format to express a musical score for the genes located on each strand of DNA. Finally, the open source Lilypond program is used to generate the PDF and MIDI files of the score and the two scores are played simultaneously.