Beauty can be born from the most terrible of situations, that’s something that’s been proved time and again. After all, there’s art in everything, including suffering. Now, you must have seen countless images of Covid-19, especially its famous spike protein structure.
Well, you can now hear what the coronavirus sounds like, as scientists have translated its structure into music. Told you – there’s art in everything.
It’s an enchanting, freewheeling melody made up of bells, strings and flutes. The spikes that poke from the virus’ surface help it latch onto unsuspecting cells. The spikes are made up of amino acids (remember this for later). Listen to the track below.
Using a technique called sonification, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology assigned each amino acid a unique note in a musical scale, converting the protein into a musical score.
Apart from sounding kind of cool, this format can help scientists find sites on the protein where antibodies or drugs might be able to bind, by searching for specific musical sequences that correspond to these sites.
Well, at least something good came out of this virus!