After the photos comes the music of the new coronavirus: experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Mit) have found a way to listen to it, translating the structure of its famous spike protein into musical notes, that is, the claw protruding from the surface of the SarsCov2 virus and helps him hook onto cells. The result, published on the website of the journal Science, is a concert for flutes and string instruments that is not just a curiosity: it is a new and perhaps faster way to find the protein's Achilles heel and neutralize it.
The sounds, from that of flutes to those of stringed instruments, represent different aspects of the spike protein. To translate it into music, the researchers assigned a note to each amino acid of the protein, thus obtaining a musical score that was performed by instruments chosen by MIT scholars.
The musical format of the protein could help to identify in its structure sites to which future drugs could bind, simply by looking for specific musical sequences that correspond to them. This, the researchers point out, is a faster and more intuitive method than those traditionally used to study proteins. Also, by comparing the musical sequence of the spike protein with a large database of other proteins translated into music, one day it may be possible to find one that sticks to spike, preventing the virus from attacking human cells