But for bioengineer Myunghwan Choi and his colleagues at Harvard, a disembodied taste bud is useless. "All the microarchitecture is destroyed," says Choi. And without the microarchitecture—from taste pores to capillaries—scientists can't fully understand how mice (and people) receive the taste of Camembert at a molecular level.

So, to examine a live mouse tongue under a microscope, Choi's team invented an apparatus that wouldn't look out of place in A Clockwork Orange. First, researchers stain the mouse's tongue with dye formulated to glow under infrared light. They they use a tiny suction hose to gently pull the anesthetized rodent's tongue out. Next the extended tongue is steadied on a stainless steel brace with a hole for microscopic observation. (Though noticeably low-tech, built with nuts and bolts from a hardware store, the brace was a breakthrough according to Choi. Without the clamp, the animal's heartbeat and breathing made the image blurry.) And finally: Lasers.