- A high-school participant proposed a field-portable microfluidic assay chip that uses light-triggered DNA “boxes” (nanoscale containers) to release multiple reagents sequentially; the chip would integrate an outer fluid loop for rapid endothermic/exothermic dissolution to supply precise heating or cooling for reactions such as Benedict’s test.

- The same concept was extended to embed different reagent sets in the outer loop, enabling programmable temperature cycles and on-chip multiplexed diagnostics without external equipment.

- Participants discussed the practicality of amplifying these DNA boxes via PCR and then digesting them with restriction enzymes to open the containers, noting that Taq polymerase itself can be produced by expressing the gene in recombinant E. coli and subsequently purified.

- A summer project goal was set to build a low-cost DNA synthesizer capable of producing 62-megabase sequences—large enough to synthesize J. Craig Venter’s published Mycoplasma laboratorium genome—using a commodity DLP projector for maskless photolithographic oligo synthesis.

- Open questions included the thermal stability of DNA nanostructures, the patent implications of synthesizing Venter’s organism, and the computational resources required to design DNA boxes that protect reagents from oxidation through favorable molecular interactions; access to a university supercomputer was offered to run the design software.