A perspective on musical representations of folded protein nanostructures

Proteins are the building blocks of all life, creating materials as diverse as spider silk, cells, and hair, but also other countless functions from enzymes to drugs. Here we discuss a method to represent folded protein nanostructures as musical compositions. We explore different avenues of artistic creation, interpolating between human design, natural or evolutionary design, and designs from a deep recurrent network model that was trained against musical scores of known three-dimensional protein structures. Artistically, our work offers a new perspective on the limits of scientific understanding, and allows human players to interact with nanoscale phenomena, providing a tool for STEM outreach, and use of nanoscopic phenomena for artistic expression.