Helix Sequencer: hear the genome

Helix Sequencer is a free, browser-based instrument that turns DNA into music. Choose a real genome, from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and E. coli to baker’s yeast, the fruit fly, the mouse and the human mitochondrion. Press play to hear the sequence read aloud one base at a time.

Each of the four DNA letters, A, C, G and T, becomes a note in a five-note scale. Repeated runs of the same base become long tones. GC-rich stretches climb while AT-rich stretches fall. In protein mode, every codon is translated into its amino acid and pitched by how water-loving or oily it is. You aren’t hearing random notes. Every melody is a fact about the sequence.

Make it your own

Pick from 13 pentatonic scales, including major, minor, Hirajoshi, Kumoi and Javanese slendro. Shape the sound with sine, square, triangle, saw and organ waveforms, a full attack-decay-sustain-release envelope, and portamento slides. Add reverb from a small room to an ice cave, or tempo-synced echoes like ping-pong and dub delay. Extra layers let you hear more of the data: a bass drone that follows GC content, bells that ring on start codons or TATA boxes, and a rhythmic pulse that marks the two chemical families of bases.

Why sonify DNA?

A single human genome holds about 3.1 billion letters, far too many to read. Data sonification turns patterns into something you can hear, so repeats, motifs and changes in composition show up as rhythm and melody. Helix Sequencer is an experiment in music-making and in new ways to perceive large datasets. At a comfortable listening speed, playing the whole human genome would take decades.

All sequences come from public reference genomes. Paste in your own FASTA sequence to hear it too.