In a first-person account, a molecular biologist whose research is on DNA makes a case for the ground where science and art overlap. The relationship, the author argues, runs in two directions: art, used as a medium, can help science move forward, and science can prompt new artistic work.

Explaining DNA work to audiences without a scientific background has frequently felt, the author says, like translating between two languages. That experience raised a question. If the science resisted plain explanation, might scientific ideas be presented artistically instead, so that people could engage with them more easily?

Science prompting new artistic work is a direction the author illustrates with ecological art: a fast-growing movement that is changing how people see the natural world and how they deal with it.

For the author, bringing molecular biology together with art ended somewhere unexpected — writing music by editing DNA sequences. A paper that has not yet been published sets out the method, which composes music by means of digital DNA sequencing. The motive, the author states, was scientific outreach alone, not biotechnology and not medical application. The approach, the author readily concedes, looks somewhat odd. Its value, as the author presents it, lies in that outreach, and in the hope that the work may encourage young people to think about careers where the arts and sciences meet.

The project started modestly, with audio used as a tool for analysing data. The author turned DNA sequences into audio through sonification — the conversion of data into sound — by allocating individual bases, and combinations of bases, along a sequence to matching musical notes. Six sonification algorithms were built to process sequences into separate audio notes. By listening, the author could pick out patterns and mutations, and could separate RNA molecules that code for proteins from RNA molecules that do not.