University of the West of Scotland (UWS)

Graduate Student, School of Engineering & Science

Acoustics in molecular biology

Thesis Title: Effect of high frequency ultrasound upon sub-cellular mechanisms

About

General Overview

My work is interested in how sound and music can directly influence life.  You may know about the work of music therapists in healthcare or have come across musicians working in high-impact social projects such as El Sistema.  Many people think that music has an amazing ability to connect up society, guide human behaviour and influence health, often for the better. 
My work looks at the biological basis of this effect and whether there is evidence for an evolutionary origin of music. A number of people already work in this area and there is an excellent book called the Singing Neanderthal which kick-started the topic.

However, my work is a little different - I'm interested in the existence of 'music' before humans came along.  More precisely I want to know whether cells can, and therefore could in the past, communicate with complex sound.  At first glance this may seem a little odd verging on unbelievable, but the hypothesis appears to be supported by a number of emerging disciplines in biology, chemistry and physics.  So the aim of my PhD was to pool recent literature on the area and manufacture an ultrasonic probe to experimentally test the idea, both of which are almost complete.  The next step is to test the probe in a number of mechanically active biological systems... still to come (collaborators will be welcomed)!


Details of PhD Research

I have designed and manufactured very high frequency (high MHz) thin film acoustic transducers for use in various biological and biomedical applications.  The work is currently experimentally investigating acoustic-chemical interactions, but this offers the possibility of scaling up to investigate macromolecules and molecular interactions in intra- and inter-cellular systems, both experimentally and through molecular modelling.  Although I'm attempting to keep it pretty dry, the work arose from some more speculative and subjective, perhaps even unashamedly hypothetical(!), 'arty' work from my time as a humanities/music student - if you would like to read more, there are a couple of papers (MA/MSc dissertations) and a comic showing how I got here... if you'd like to concentrate on the basic science, I've uploaded a poster presentation and (semi-)recent project report.


Academic Background

University of Edinburgh - MA (honours) in Philosophy and Music
University of Edinburgh - MSc by research in Neuroscience
University of Edinburgh - PgCert in Translational Medicine
University of the West of Scotland - PhD in Physics (in progress)

General interests

Mostly interested in how different ideas connect up and how to put them into practice; in particular the world of basic science with art, music and subjectivity. In other words, how exactly can we understand creativity, emotional sensitivity and morality in terms of the developments of modern 'natural' science and do we really want to...
I also help out with an interdisciplinary discussion group and Sciart/interdisciplinary collaboration network in Edinburgh.

Contact me on:
michael.butler [at] uws.ac.uk

Contact Information