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Music From DNA Patented

Posted by kdawson on from the tinkle-of-little-coins dept.

stm2 writes "Two lawyers have patented generating music from a DNA sequence. According to the patent, it covers 'music generated by decoding and transcribing genetic information within a DNA sequence into a music signal having melody and harmony.' A comment to the blog post mentions DNA-derived music being performed at a conference in 1995."

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. For Christ Sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Look, I know it's standard groupthink around here to hate patents and anything patent related, but we don't need blatently false stories to rile everyone up.

    The patent is not for "music obtained from DNA" it's for a METHOD to obtain music from DNA. The idea is actually pretty damn unique if you ask me. This is not a frivolous patent.

    God damn Slashdot seems to get more and more inaccurate every year.

  2. prior art exceedingly likely, except ..... by paulbd · · Score: 4, Informative

    i graduated with a bachelors in molecular biology & biochemistry in 1981. i had already read papers by that time which described audio/musical transcriptions of DNA, RNA and protein sequences specifically designed to take advantage of the greater perceptual bandwidth of the auditory system vs. the visual system.

    the one thing that might be novel here (i don't have time to read a patent abstract at present) is if they have found some way to generate musically meaningful compositions that go beyond a simple (chemical unit) => (musical note) mapping. that could enhance the ability of the auditory system to recognize patterns in sequences, and might be worthy of a patent.

  3. Re:Uh... What? by pallmall1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    And this translation of DNA into music is not even a salable product...
    Litigation is a profitable product for lawyers.
    --
    3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
  4. The actual patent by geeknado · · Score: 4, Informative
    Having attempted to actually read this patent, it appears that the links in both the summary and the (very brief) article take us to one pertaining to the chimeric encoding of plastidic phosphoglucomutase. Not ideal.

    Here's a link to the actual patent of interest.