- A hypothesis was floated that routine prenatal ultrasound exposure might be a contributing factor to autism spectrum disorders, prompting discussion of the valproic-acid rodent model of autism and links to two papers on hyper-connectivity and enhanced microcircuit plasticity in that model (doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2010.05.004 and doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2010.05.001).

- A detailed open-science workflow was proposed for exhaustively classifying DNA-polymerase subunits: harvest all known sequences, pre-cluster at ~50 % identity, build HMMs with HMMER3, iteratively search UniProt, map subunit combinations across NCBI taxonomy, and study co-evolution of subunit families.

- Participants weighed the merits of Hidden Markov Models versus simple clustering for large-scale sequence analysis, concluding that HMMs give higher sensitivity for remote homolog detection and that “HMM distances” (alignment scores to multiple family HMMs) can serve as coordinates in protein-family space.

- A 2010 paper on “light-controlled synthesis of nucleic acids” was critiqued; the channel brainstormed an improved scheme in which a DNA polymerase is evolved to accept reversibly photo-switched dNTP analogues, enabling true optical control of single-base incorporation rather than irreversible photocleavage.

- A brief Turing-test poll circulated around a YouTube video of a humanoid robot, with consensus that subtle failures in jaw, lip, and shoulder kinematics betrayed its artificial nature.

- The Debian Neuroscience team released their 2011 community survey results (http://neuro.debian.net/survey/2011/), providing a snapshot of tool usage and needs among open-source neuroinformatics researchers.