• SynBioSS, a web-based CAD tool for synthetic biology, automatically generates SBML/NetCDF files describing biological “circuits” built from MIT’s BioBricks Registry; participants are reverse-engineering its hidden PHP interfaces (interface1.php, interface2.php, interface3.php) to expose and reuse the file-generation logic.  
• A parallel tutorial covered BioBricks fundamentals—promoters, ribosome-binding sites (RBS), coding DNA, terminators—and linked to yeast parts lists and assembly standards, while early Flash/AJAX “BioBench” GUI mock-ups were critiqued for prioritizing flashy drag-and-drop over accurate biological constraints.  
• Feasibility of atom-level whole-cell simulation was debated: a tobacco-mosaic virus (≈1 million atoms) was simulated for microseconds, but eukaryotic cells are 10⁶–10⁹ times larger, implying decades before practical atomic simulations; resources cited include CellDesigner (celldesigner.org) and libSBML for programmatic SBML handling.  
• A low-budget GFP-marketing scheme was proposed—inserting green fluorescent protein into pets or vegetables to attract research funding—paralleling “The Radioactive Boy Scout” case as evidence that motivated amateurs can achieve nuclear-level projects using publicly available information.  
• Long-term vision articulated: integrate SynBioSS file generation with partsregistry.org, inventory/SKDB systems, and automated lab-protocol generation to accelerate open, reproducible biological engineering.  
• Real-world robot locomotion was illustrated with Boston Dynamics’ BigDog and Podypedal, highlighting gasoline-powered mini-generators and the “kick test” as a benchmark for ambulatory stability.  
• Military and NASA “bullet tests” were described—literally shooting servers and circuit boards to verify redundancy and ruggedness—with anecdotes of fiber-optic redundancy audits revealing single-point failures.  
• Budget rhetoric contrasted $700 billion bailout funds with a $6 billion space-elevator or lunar colony, framing privatized space travel as an alternative to government shuttle shortages.