Scientists translate coronavirus spike protein into music, revealing more about its structure
Share
Share
- ABC Health & Wellbeing
By Tegan Taylor
Posted earlier today at 00:49
Rendering a virus as music can reveal details we might otherwise have missed.
(Unsplash: Fusion Medical Animation/Getty Images: SpicyTruffel)
By this stage, you will have seen plenty of artists' impressions of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Now, you can hear one.
One of the distinguishing features of SARS-CoV-2 is the crown, or corona, of spikes on its surface. Zoom in to those infinitesimal spikes further and they're made up of chains of proteins, looping and folding over one another.
In an attempt to understand this new pathogen better, musician and engineer Markus Buehler and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have assigned each protein and structural form a musical equivalent.
The result, generated by artificial intelligence, is a surprisingly soothing musical score that Professor Buehler said revealed detail that microscopes couldn't.
SOUNDCLOUD: Soundcloud coronavirus spike protein as a music score
"Our brains are great at processing sound. In one sweep, our ears pick up all of its hierarchical features: pitch, timbre, volume, melody, rhythm, and chords," he said.
"We would need a high-powered microscope to see the equivalent detail in an image, and we could never see it all at once.
