From the Chronicle of Higher Education dated May 6, 2005

The Music of Life

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

Composers often look to their hearts for inspiration, but Ryan L. Fraley looked to his liver, his spleen, his appendix -- in fact, every cell of his body -- while writing a symphony that was performed in April in Indianapolis. In a commission for the Ball State University wind ensemble, Mr. Fraley used the human DNA sequence to provide the notes for his new work titled "Genome: Symphony No. 1 for Band."

The idea had been gestating for a while, says Mr. Fraley. "In June of 2000, when the human genome project was done mapping the entire genome, I just instantly knew it had to be done."

Turning DNA into music involved both art and science. The genome is made of four "letters" or bases of DNA, and the sequence of those bases provides the instructions for cells to string together amino acids into proteins. Mr. Fraley assigned notes to the 20 different amino acids and then selected sequences from each of the human chromosomes to build his five-movement symphony. He freely edited the genes, choosing the most melodic elements.

Blindly following the genome would have led to some monotonous music because certain segments repeat the same DNA base for long stretches.

Even though the genome provided the raw material, Mr. Fraley didn't save any time using this composing process. It took him more than a year to write the 32-minute piece. "This was labor intensive, but it was a very fun project," he says.

And if critics don't like the music, they can't be too savage. All of humanity had a hand in its production.