- Graphene sheets with a tensile modulus of ~35 GPa were proposed as practical, defect-free membranes for metallic-hydrogen containers and ultra-high-pressure balloons, trading some strength against carbon nanotubes for far easier synthesis.  
- The MIT BioBricks Registry was critiqued as annotation-heavy yet semantically thin; participants sketched a fork that layers an SKDB-style compatibility model on top so promoters, genes, and outputs can be algorithmically matched and assembled.  
- A “story-builder” GUI concept was outlined: a left-hand palette of biological-part icons, a right-hand detail pane, and a validator that suggests compatible edges (e.g., “produces TetR” → “sensor responds to TetR”) with keyboard-only navigation and future IRC-bot wrappers.  
- A crowd-sourced metadata pipeline was proposed, enlisting DIYbio students to extract kinetic parameters from open-access papers to populate the new registry, while acknowledging pay-wall friction.  
- Cellular-automata experiments using GFP or faster luciferin reporters were discussed, citing prior bacterial photography and Turing-pattern formation in living media as inspiration.  
- BioBrick BBa_I742111 encoding limonene synthase was highlighted: the enzyme yields limonene, a citrus-scented, polystyrene-dissolving, flammable hydrocarbon, prompting half-serious talk of “bactonapalm.”  
- An automated-design project was described that takes a “bag of parts,” builds an interconnection graph, simulates BioBrick kinetics, and evolves optimal circuits via graph-rewriting grammar rules and neural-network-like structures, with C# tooling and potential funding in play.  
- Links circulated included Mozilla Ubiquity (labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity), UT Austin automated-design talk (clm.utexas.edu/MM-MM08talk-med/), Paul Rothemund’s TED talk on DNA origami (ted.com), and news of reconstructed HERV-K retroviruses from human-genome fragments.