Some guys from New Zeland at the Centre for Microbial Innovation designed what I think is the funniest metabolomics experiment so far. They compared the metabolome of yeast cells growing in defined liquid medium exposed to music and silence. The biomass production was decreased by 14% when the cells were exposed to sonic stimuli, and the metabolite profile was also significantly different compared with silence.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/e6143q34160g633r/
Unfortunately, they didn't specify in their methods what kind of music they used. Was it Britney Spears or Enrique Iglesias? that might clearly explain the lower biomass production... I bet they also activated signaling for apoptosis.
Clearly, a great candidate paper for the Ig Nobel Prize ;-)
