• A pre-print on grip-strength genetics (UK Biobank, N≈335 k) reports 101 genome-wide significant loci; many hit developmental-disorder genes (FTO, BDNF, FOXP1, etc.) and show brain-expression enrichment, underscoring a muscle–brain genetic link.  
• Oxford nanopore users announced the first telomere-to-telomere single-molecule reads of entire yeast chromosomes (~220 kb), a milestone toward reading human chromosomes in one pass.  
• A Nature paper on “Massively parallel de novo protein design for targeted therapeutics” was circulated, highlighting computational design of novel proteins at scale.  
• Discussion of error-prone PCR via manganese led to the speculative idea of engineering a polymerase that intentionally “skips” 99 bases during replication to de-duplicate long synthetic repeats—countered by the claim that natural polymerases have no selective pressure for such skipping.  
• Scott Alexander’s Slate Star Codex essay “In Favor of Futurism Being About the Future” was shared as a defense of ambitious, long-term technology forecasting.  
• A Frontiers blog post on the Blue Brain Project’s claim of discovering “multi-dimensional universes in brain networks” was met with skepticism.