‘Molecular Musician’ Finds Harmony Between Research and Rock

Biological sciences major Cadence Michels sees striking parallels between genetic code and musical composition—and she's using both to make her mark at UMD.

Most people wouldn’t compare mucus research to music composition. But for Cadence Michels, a senior biological sciences major at the University of Maryland, the connection is crystal clear: much like the way different notes can link into a chord progression and create a melody, genetic bases can connect to create the molecular components that make up mucus in the human body. 

“It’s something I started to realize in high school and confirmed while working in labs here at UMD. We read genetic bases in sets of three to make a codon, which encodes an amino acid,” she explained. “To me, it sounded like reading three notes and creating a chord in music. And when you put amino acids together in a chain to form a protein, it’s like putting together a set of chords into a progression that forms a song.” 

Michels’ unique perspective has shaped her college experience in unexpected ways. A lifelong musician, she spent years crafting, producing, recording and performing her own melodies—developing patience and skills that have also helped her carry scientific research from initial hypotheses to conference presentations. Michels was also a radio DJ at UMD’s campus radio station WMUC, where she traced musical family trees, mapping artistic lineages the way a geneticist would trace inheritance patterns.

Today, Michels continues to pursue both of her passions: she’s a researcher on a UMD Grand Challenges project focused on respiratory disease and vice president of the student-run Terrapin Record Label. It’s a complicated balance—she spends her days in the lab extracting mucus from cell cultures and her nights booking student bands for shows and performing indie rock songs.

In the lab, Michels applies her musically inspired analytical skills to cutting-edge molecular biology research on mucus. She works with Louisa Wu, an associate professor in UMD’s Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, to study ways to alter the molecular composition of mucus to fight respiratory diseases such as cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. 

“From working with Cadence and talking with her during office hours, I could tell she was sincerely passionate about genetics. It’s almost intuitive to her, just as music is,” Wu said. “We’ve had great conversations about how biology and music both engage patterns and organize information.”

Studying chords and codons

Michels’ pattern-recognition mindset led her to Wu’s BSCI 410 Molecular Genetics course two years ago. Their office hour conversations eventually opened the door to research opportunities. 

“I’ve always been a huge genetics nerd,” Michels joked, tracing her fascination to watching Jurassic Park as a child. “Just thinking about how these teeny sequences of information can have such a big impact on life at all levels is just amazing to me.” 

Michels thought studying mucus and its effect on human infections in Wu’s lab would allow her to become a more well-rounded scientist while also making a positive impact on patient care. 

Their project focuses on a critical medical problem: the composition of mucus proteins and their impact on human health. Healthy airway mucus contains two proteins—Mucin 5AC and the normally predominant mucin, 5B. In respiratory diseases like asthma or COPD, that ratio flips. Too much Mucin 5AC makes mucus thicker and harder to clear, blocking airways and making it difficult for the body to breathe and fight infections properly. 

“Our goal is to make the mucus less thick and easier to deal with,” she said. “Our team developed a specially designed protease—essentially ‘selective scissors’—that can identify and cut 5AC to restore healthier ratios.”

Michels described the process as similar to cutting up a song at specific melodic motifs and breaking it down into smaller pieces.

"It's kind of like how someone would sample a song by isolating a particular beat or melody from it," she explained. "The proteases will recognize unique 'motifs' in the biochemical structure of the mucus protein and cut it there, resulting in smaller pieces of the protein."

Working with UMD Associate Professor of Bioengineering Gregg Duncan and biological sciences Ph.D. candidate Sahana Kumar, Michels tests the ‘scissors’ by culturing epithelial airway cells, mimicking how human bodies produce mucus. By collecting this lab-produced mucus and applying the protease to it, the researchers can identify just how effective the protease is at restoring a healthier protein balance.

But those scissors may offer another advantage in the medical field. Michels believes that the tool’s ability to precisely recognize and cut specific mucus proteins suggests it may also detect and measure 5AC levels in mucus samples. Having family members with asthma, she recognizes that traditional testing methods can be limited, invasive and painful. 

“Anyone who’s been tested for asthma knows that it’s one of the most uncomfortable things you can go through,” Michels said. “There are a few procedures that test for it, but it involves you having to cough and breathe until you can’t anymore, rinse and repeat.” 

Because the molecular scissors are designed to latch onto any 5AC present, Michels sees their potential as a diagnostic tool. She’s currently working to use this scissor technology to try to make it easier to culture and diagnose respiratory illnesses like asthma. 

“It's doing what we are expecting it to do, which is great,” she noted. “There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to fully confirm it, but it does seem to be trending in the right direction.”

For Michels, experiences with music and research at UMD have provided unexpected lessons about collaboration, experimental design and how seemingly different fields often speak the same language. 

“Science is fun like that,” she said. “Everything is kind of just interconnected in one way or another. I hope it continues to help me develop myself as a researcher and a musician as I enter graduate school and beyond.”