Earlier this summer, some big minds sat down in a conference room in West Huntsville to talk about very small things.

That’s a daily occurrence at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, where genomics – basically, how an organism’s genes work together in its specific environment — is the name of the game, but what set this session apart was the topic: The genetics that might give Spider-Man and the X-Men their superpowers.

That day, the institute’s Sarah Sharman, Chris Powell and faculty investigator Greg Cooper recorded the latest episode of the “Tiny Expeditions” podcast, a HudsonAlpha production designed to present cutting-edge science on genetics, DNA and inheritance in an accessible — and entertaining — way.