HARPER%FINFUN@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU ("Robert Harper ", Finland) (09/07/90)
There was a small article in Genetic engineering news a few years ago, which dealt with the theme "What does Chopin's Funeral March have in common with the DNA coding sequence for tyrosine kinase." Well, music like DNA is dominated by periodicity and repeated cycles. Apparently some Japanese scientist used the code of certain DNA molecules to compose music. He made musical transformations of the first 51 codons of phosphoglycerate kinase and the resulting music when played on the violin was said to be very pleasing to the ear. He has also reversed the procedure and transcribed well known musical scores into codons, and has found homologous genes for compositions by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven:-) It so happens that Chopin's Nocturne Opus 55 No 1 gives you a polypeptide rich in proline, serine, phenylalanine, and tyrosine. I don't know if this should be taken seriously but apparently the Funeral March by Chopin when it is coded is very much like tryosine kinase... the heart of many cancer causing genes. Mozart on composing: "My subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete in my mind so that I can survey it like a fine picture at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts SUCCESSIVELY, but I hear them as it were gleich alles zusammen, all at once..." Food for thought if you are one of those ancient sociobiologists :-) Rob "heresy is always much more intersting than doctrine" Harper