January 28, 2016 at 04:00AM

Today I Learned: 1) Polymerases have EXTREMELY high affinity for DNA. As a consequence, the vast majority of polymerases in any given cell are bound to DNA at any one time. This applies both to DNA polymerases, which replicate your genome, and RNA polymerases, which transcribe your genes into RNA. 2) High molecular weight DNA (i.e., genomes) is quite viscous. Check out any youtube video of at-home DNA extraction to see for yourself... ...or better yet, try out a DNA extraction yourself! You basically just need some fruit, high-percentage ethanol (>=70%), salt, and detergent. Try it out here: http://ift.tt/1QuhdLv. Note that this procedure isn't sensitive to much except, to some degree, the makeup of the lysis buffer. If you don't have 50 mL conicals at home (and who does?), just use a glass. If you don't have a coffee filter, use a paper towel or colander or anything else that will strain out the big chunks. 3) ...what the (valid English) sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" means. It uses three versions of the word "buffalo": the animal otherwise known as a bison; the city in New York; and the archaic use meaning roughly "to bully" (or possibly to bully roughly?). The 7x buffalo sentence translates to, it's "New York bison that New York bison bully, bully New York bison." Thanks to Robert Johnson for explaining this one to me, and also for pointing out that you can take it to 11x buffalo quite easily -- "New York bison that New York bison bully, bully New York bison that New York bison bully".