• A new Austin “fablab / techshop” is being equipped with heavy CNC, TIG, and woodworking tools and will finance itself by renting private 22 × 16 ft bays for $225/mo while keeping one day a week open to the public, prompting debate on whether to favor one large fast machine or multiple smaller parallel units.

• Participants are encoding standard PCR and gel-electrophoresis protocols into an open XML DTD called CLP-ML, inviting extensions from Protocol-Online.org to create a shareable DIYbio protocol library.

• A minimal microbial dopamine pathway was reverse-engineered from Reactome and KEGG: three enzymes (tyrosine hydroxylase, aromatic-L-amino-acid decarboxylase, tyrosinase) were mapped to GenBank IDs, with mouse and human tyrosine hydroxylase already shown to express in E. coli, and Neurospora crassa highlighted as the genetically tractable haploid chassis with the shortest native route.

• A “dopamine fountain” experiment was proposed—insert the three genes into E. coli under inducible promoters, lyse the cells, and purify dopamine by gel electrophoresis—while participants weighed codon-optimization pitfalls, intron removal, and reverse-translation reliability using tools like the SMS utility and NCBI Entrez.

• A wish-list program was articulated to recursively resolve all metabolite dependencies for any target compound, rank sequenced organisms by how many pathway steps they already encode, and output the optimal chassis plus missing genes.

• Micro-encapsulated neurotransmitters released by ultrasound were floated as a targeted brain-delivery mechanism, then critiqued for blood–brain-barrier penetration and debris-clearance challenges.

• Links shared include the Washington “video enhancement from still photos” project, a USB-missile-launcher Python hack, Inkscape’s lib2geom library for CAM curves, NCBI’s FTP genome repositories (ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/genomes), Usman Haque’s paper “Hardspace, Softspace and the possibilities of open source architecture,” and the CAELinux engineering distribution (Salome, Code_Aster, OpenFOAM).

• Anecdotes about THC-producing GMO plants (oranges, dandelions, yeast) sparked discussion of “bio-trolling” scenarios—e.g., GFP/THC dandelions for courthouse lawns—and the legal gray area of psychoactive plant engineering.

• The conversation reflects broader frustration with institutional education, DIYbio restrictions (“organic synthesis = terrorism”), and the cultural portrayal of transhumanists as villains, all framed against the backdrop of garage biotech and open science.