PROM --- Protein Music Expressing Genetic Messages from Protein Sequence

Biography

L.Y. Han and Y.Z. Chen's work on protein music is inspired by the richness of the "genetic messages" contained in the sequence of proteins. Through their research of using artificial intelligence methods for predicting protein function and protein-protein interactions (they have jointly published over 10 papers in high ranking biology journals), they found that the enormous diversity of protein structure and function are spelled out by the composition of several structural and physicochemical properties of individual amino acids. They have been amazed by the close similarity of the parallels between the music structure and the structure of these properties. Encouraged by the successes of other gene and protein music researchers, they set out to develop their own unique protein music program that more fully explore the richness of the "genetic message" contained in the protein sequence.

There are two unique features in their protein music software:

• Multiple (5 in total) structural and physicochemical properties of amino acids are used to control the tones, pitches, intensity and the instruments played. This gives a richer tone and synergistic play of multiple music instruments.
• Automated software to allow a user to instantaneously generate a music from the sequence of his or her input protein sequence.

L.Y. Han got his MSc in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science from ChongQing University in 2002. He is currently a research fellow and is completing his PhD in Bioinformatics in National University of Singapore.

Y.Z. Chen obtained his MSc in Theoretical Physics from Institute of Theoretical Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1985, his PhD in Theoretical Physics from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1989. Since 1989, he has been working in computational biophysics, computer aided drug design, and computational biology in Purdue University, ISIS Pharmaceuticals and National University of Singapore.

They have been doing research in hot topics in bioinformatics such as database development, protein function and protein-protein interaction predictions. Over the last three years, they have jointly published over 10 papers in high-ranking biology journals in the area of bioinformatics.

Their work in protein music has been influenced and inspired by Peter Gena, Marry Anne Clark, Linda Long, and Susan Alexjander.

They are indebted to the contribution of other coworkers involved in this project: Jiang Li, C.J. Zheng, J. Cui, H.L. Zhang and H. Zhou.

Please contact us at csccyz@nus.edu.sg and lyhan@cz3.nus.edu.sg, Tel 65-68746877