Gene Music | Music Gene - FanFaire at the 2010 San Diego Science Festival

IS THERE MUSIC IN OUR GENES? DO WE HAVE GENES FOR MUSIC?

These were some of the questions that the 2010 San Diego Science Festival Signature Event hosted by FanFaire Foundation addressed in a multimedia CONCERT-LECTURE which demonstrated that science and music are NOT worlds apart as most of us are inclined to think--indeed that they can and do converge!

Dr. Gloria Cajipe, FanFaire.com's Technical Director and Editor and a research chemist in an earlier career presented answers to these interesting questions in a talk that could alternately have been entitled "A Musical Introduction to Gene and Protein Structure." Her multimedia presentation wass based on studies by biochemists and molecular biologists in the US and abroad who in the course of their research on gene and protein sequencing devised a way of translating nucleic and amino acid sequences of various genes and proteins into veritable musical compositions.

In tandem with the lecture, recitalist and concert soloist, Dr. Tatiana Roitman who is also a Lecturer with the Music Program of the University of San Diego demonstrated at the piano the development of gene-encoded protein music from single notes (amino acids) to a Debussy-like variation (protein) based on the work of UCLA "music scientists" Rie Takahashi and Dr. Jeffrey Miller. She also opened the program with pieces from the "Petite Suite" of Alexander Borodin, the famous 19th century Russian composer AND renowned professor of chemistry, of whom it can unequivocally be said: In him science and music truly converged. The event closed with a popular Variation by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who along with Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the great physicist (and violinist!) Albert Einstein's two favorite composers.