- A Frontiers paper, “The tale of the neuroscientists and the computer,” was lauded for reviving Lazebnik’s 2002 critique of reductionist biology and advocating circuit-level, mechanistic models over purely observational approaches.  
- Open-source CAD-to-mesh pipelines were compared: SALOME (OpenCASCADE-based) was recommended for solid-to-mesh workflows, while CGAL, PythonOCC, CadQuery, and kragen’s stl3dpy were cited as complementary programmatic modeling tools.  
- The 2014 iGEM “vegan cheese” project run by Counter Culture Labs and BioCurious was debated; kanzure argued that reliance on established community labs diluted the “DIY” ethos and questioned how teams without expensive synthesizers would obtain plasmids.  
- A Google spreadsheet chronicling decades of C. elegans simulation progress was shared, along with links to the CLONES closed-loop neuromechanical framework and videos of worm locomotion models.  
- Open-source cellular infrastructure was examined via OpenBTS, Range Networks SDR1, and USRP-based GSM/3G stacks, with hardware design files and the OpenBTS 4.0 manual provided.  
- The Open qPCR Kickstarter (Mac Cowell & J. Schloendorn) aims to ship a $1,300 open-hardware real-time PCR machine with full CAD, BOM, and software released under open-source licenses; participants weighed its utility for on-farm Mycoplasma diagnostics versus cheaper PCR alternatives.  
- A used Waters Micromass Tof-Spec 2E mass spectrometer appeared on eBay, prompting curiosity about its specs and manual availability for DIYbio applications.  
- The OpenTrons rapid-prototyping pipetting robot was promoted on Reddit as a low-cost entry point for lab automation, complementing broader discussions on open-source biology hardware.  
- Historical and technical archives were highlighted: the Foundry Manual at http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/ was cited as foundational for DIY metal casting, and the term “gene pool” was traced to Russian geneticist A. S. Serebrovskii’s “genofond.”