• The FDA’s unanimous approval of Luxturna, the first in-vivo gene therapy for an inherited eye disease, is hailed as a watershed moment for CRISPR-style treatments and a signal that regulators are ready for mainstream genomic medicine.  
• “Uplifting” is adopted as the standard term for technologically augmenting non-human animals toward higher cognitive capacities, framing a new ethical and technical frontier in transhumanist discourse.  
• DIY medicine is advancing rapidly: the Four Thieves Vinegar collective released open-source plans for a desktop chemistry lab to synthesize Sovaldi and other generics, while NurdRage published a $22 k, 2-year total-synthesis route to pyrimethamine on YouTube, illustrating the feasibility of garage-scale pharmaceutical production.  
• A proposed anti-aging “polypill” combines rapamycin/everolimus, metformin, statins, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, and PDE5 inhibitors to extend health-span, with the Ambrosia Plasma young-blood transfusion startup (SF & Tampa) noted as a commercial experiment in parabiosis-based rejuvenation.  
• WADA signaled that athletes treated with gene editing for medical reasons may compete if the intervention merely restores “normal” function, while existing biological-passport biomarkers could still detect illicit gene doping.  
• Technical debate concluded that today’s DNA synthesizers are microfluidic, not nanofluidic; however, PacBio-style zeptoliter-volume enzyme reactions and Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) variants (patented by DNA Script and Nuclera Nucleics) are stepping-stones toward true nanofluidic synthesis.  
• Cell-free synthetic biochemistry (raspberry-ketone production via purified enzymes) and digital data storage inside living cells (biorxiv 096792) were highlighted as complementary paths to scalable, enzyme-driven manufacturing and biological hard drives.  
• The open-source KATARA microfluidic controller (70-solenoid Arduino-based valve array) and alternative actuation methods such as electrostatic membrane deflection and electro-osmosis were presented as accessible tools for large-scale integrated microfluidic chips.  
• Primer Exchange Reaction (PER) was introduced as a programmable nucleic-acid mechanism for molecular event recording and DNA nanostructure assembly, supported by patent WO2017143006A1 and a Vimeo explainer.  
• Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) was proposed as an optical readout for “photonic DNA processors,” suggesting hybrid photonic–biochemical computing architectures that could merge synthetic biology with light-based logic.