• DARPA launched the MICrONS program, a multi-year initiative to reverse-engineer cortical micro-circuits and translate the discovered “algorithms of the brain” into next-generation ML systems capable of one-shot learning, unsupervised clustering and scene parsing.

• A yeast-based “heritable recombination system for synthetic Darwinian evolution” (PMC3569010) was highlighted as a platform for continuous in-vivo directed evolution; participants discussed coupling it with microfluidic droplet “force-mating” to bypass transformation limits of MAGE or DNA shuffling.

• Open wet-lab economics were debated: shared community labs (e.g., London BioHackspace) suffer from reagent costs that scale with user count, making single-person labs more viable for serious synthetic-biology work.

• Health-tracking discussion revealed that BPA-free plastics (PET, HDPE, PP) still leach estrogenic compounds (BPS, etc.) into bottled water, with measurable bio-activity in human-cell assays; glycemic index was criticized for ignoring non-glucose insulinogenic substances like fructose.

• kanzure released an updated “paperbot” (https://github.com/kanzure/paperbot) and proposed replacing its simple request-yielding logic with a modular planner/executor architecture that can queue, version and re-run plans when gateway failures occur.

• A Colorado thesis on “the impact of ploidy on the genotypic effects of directed evolution” (http://dowell.colorado.edu/assets/pdf/richmondthesis.pdf) was shared for its quantitative analysis of how polyploidy alters evolutionary outcomes.

• Practical bio-commerce ideas included E. coli production of human proteins such as irisin, NGF and GDF11 for the anti-aging market, while noting ecosystem-competition risks of chlorophyll-optimized crops.

• Toyota’s unintended-acceleration post-mortem was circulated: throttle-control code had cyclomatic complexity 146, a 1 300-line untested function and 80 % global variables—cited as a textbook failure of safety-critical firmware.

• Long-term roadmap debate: kanzure estimated whole-brain emulation could be achieved within ~100 years with “reasonable effort,” emphasizing that transhumanism’s popularity is irrelevant to continued technical progress.