biology

This is what goes on behind the scenes whenever you open your mouth to speak.

I can't seem to manage to keep my iPod in my bag for a day without creating an awful tangle of headphones, but my body's cells can work with two meters of stringy DNA into a tiny nucleus without making a knot. The secret is a structure called a fractal globule, according to a research paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Electron microscopes are great and all, but the problem is that you can't use them to get up close and personal inside a living cell without killing it. That might change, however, as scientists are working to use quantum mechanics to overcome this obstacle.

Lightning bolts may not bring Frankenstein to life, but their blood vessel-like patterns could form the foundation for artificial organs. That would rely on a known lab trick that imprints electricity patterns inside plastic blocks.

It's known that driving a nail into one end of an electrically charged block results in an electric discharge running throughout the plastic. PopSci previously examined this process of trapping lightning, so to speak.

Generally, DNA is only good for preserving and passing on blueprints for making organisms. However, scientists at MIT and Boston University have altered E. coli DNA to perform another function within the cell, like basic computing. Essentially, they've taught E. coli to count.

Ever since the fish's discovery in 1939, scientists have believed that the tube-shaped eyes of Macropinna microstoma, commonly called the "barreleye," were fixed in place, limiting its vision to whatever was directly overhead. Recent research from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) proves this theory wrong: in reality, this crazy fish can rotate its eyes from an overhead view, which helps it locate prey swimming above, to the front of its face. This helps explain how the fish is able to actually capture the prey with its tiny mouth.

A good dose of nature can still soothe the psyche of the modern human, but sometimes nature, red in tooth and claw, can also just gross you out. Wasps turn helpless caterpillars into a 24x7 buffet for young ones, mama mantis snacks on the head of its former lover, and a frog gives new meaning to oral fixation when nurturing the kiddies.

As any brewer will tell you, the yeast used to make beer tends to bunch up during fermentation. However, despite thousands of years of brewing and decades of genetic research on yeast, no one was able to explain why yeast stuck together. Now, not only has the gene behind the clumping been discovered, but that gene also offers an interesting look at how life may have become multicellular, and provides a new example of an important evolutionary theory.