UGA student makes music from HIV
A graduate student at the University of Georgia has used the genome for HIV to create music.
Alexandra Pajak used the National Institutes of Health's record of the retrovirus' genome -- and the patterns produced by the virus in infected cells -- to compose music, according to an article on the website of Scientific American.
Pajak is a grad student in clinical social work and composes in her spare time. She lets the virus script music by assigning pitches to nucleotides and to the amino acids manufactured when HIV enters a human cell, she told the magazine.
A new album of her work, Sounds of HIV (Azica Records), was performed by an ensemble and released in late October. Some of the proceeds will go to HIV vaccine research at the Emory Vaccine Center.
About the Author
Ty Tagami is a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Since joining the newspaper in 2002, he has written about everything from hurricanes to homelessness. He has deep experience covering local government and education, and can often be found under the Gold Dome when lawmakers meet or in a school somewhere in the state.
