A Musical Score for Disease – Listening to Cancer Genes?

This is very interesting and thanks to Medgadget for finding this one. Will we someday be listening to cancer genes and perhaps others? If you would like to hear what the genes sound like, here’s the page. I do have to say that this is a very interesting concept whereby I wonder if it would make it’s way to the diagnosis end of healthcare or perhaps offer an alternative method of initial interpretation. BD

“When set to music, colon cancer sounds kind of eerie. That's the finding of Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School who is developing a computer program that translates protein and gene expression into music. In his acoustic translation, harmony represents good health, and discord indicates disease.

Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, translated populations of genes into musical notes. Each constellation (green) represents a key network of interrelated genes (blue). Each network is represented by a musical note. In healthy cells, the notes form music in harmony, indicating a healthy state. In cancer cells, the soundtrack veers out of harmony, signaling a transition from a healthy to a diseased state.”

Technology Review: A Musical Score for Disease

Hat Tip: Medgadget