Music notes to amino acid sequence: A STEAM approach to study protein structure

Abstract

Recently, manuscripts that use bioinformatics tools to convert proteins and other biological materials into music have appeared in several journals. The authors claim that this type of studies adds joy to education of life sciences and attract public attention to biochemistry education along with other uses. We thought the reverse of the process might also be possible for the purpose. We converted notes into amino acids depending on the decreasing hydrophobicity and by using the famous nursery song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” notes, a hypothetical protein sequence was obtained. Three-dimensional structures were modeled by I-Tasser Protein Structure and Function Prediction server and the structure of the possible models were investigated. This Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) approach may bring fun to protein structure education. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(6):669–671, 2019.