Researchers at MIT have just developed an artificial intelligence method to correlate amino acids found in the functional proteins in our bodies to music. They allocated a tone to each amino acid, and when the sequence of amino acids that makes up any given protein is played back, each is a unique musical composition.

This works so well because proteins are structurally complex, made up of hundreds of amino acid units which fold into distinct motifs and shapes that allow them to do their jobs in our cells. Proteins are typically studied by examining amino acid sequences or with 3-D X-ray crystallography - this new work provides a completely new way to study proteins. 

One challenge the researchers faced is that conventional musical scales have just 12 notes, but there are 20 amino acids that make up proteins in our bodies. They actually used quantum chemical theories to translate the specific vibrational frequencies of the molecules in the amino acids into sounds, then made these audible to human ears. In addition to the protein "orchestra" linked about, you can listen to another amino acid soundtrack in the MIT press release about this publication. 

One very exciting aspect of this method is that it is also possible to do the process in reverse to generate new proteins not found in nature based on small changes made by artificial intelligence to the existing protein soundtracks!