"...what would remain of us thanks to music, not a word, not a letter,...
between us songs are anachronistic,..." (Jacques Derrida: The Post Card)
New Compositions, 1997
Nocturne for Insects Dedicated to Takuko Kai on the 50th Anniversary
of Shirokane Kindergarten
In kindergarten nights, I watched several
entomologists collecting insects by spreading large white sheet in Meguro
Natural Garden. The image and sound of numerous insects, blackening the
sheet in just a few moment after trap lamps were turned on, astonished
me with revelation of the other world. This piece is based on four sequences
of mariner-type transposons of insects, and dedicated to Miss Takuko Kai
for her lifelong devotion to infant souls. MIDI File
Umu Umu Song Dedicated to Takeshi Kato on the occasion
of his retirement from Osaka University
When bacterial cells are exposed to sunlight,
a lot of photoproducts accumulate in DNA, but they manage to replicate
in the presence of damaged bases. Crucial genes in this mutagenic response
were identified by Dr. Takeshi Kato in 1977 and later shown to be composed
of an operon of two genes termed umuD and umuC. After N-terminal peptide
of UmuD is cleaved off, the proteins make a complex and bind to damaged
portion of DNA, aiding polymerase to circumvent the block. Sequences of
messenger RNA, UmuD, and UmuC proteins are played successively. MIDI File
Who's Afraid of Alkylation? Dedicated to Bernard Strauss on his 70th
Birthday
One of lethal lesions produced in cellular
DNA by alkylating chemicals is 3-methyladenine. In early 90s, we have
identified an inducible gene (alkA) coding for a repair enzyme 3-methyladenine-DNA
glycosylase in Bacillus subtilis cells. Surprisingly, recent completion
of total DNA sequence of this bacterium revealed two more putative genes
(tagI and tagII) for the same enzyme. This episode reminds us how little
we know about our environment. This piece portraying sequences of three
glycosylases is dedicated to Professor Bernard Strauss, who initiated
the whole field of alkylation repair three decades ago. MIDI File