- A large UK Biobank GWAS (223,773 subjects) identified 28 loci—14 novel—associated with broadly-defined headache, with the strongest hit (rs11172113 in LRP1) at P ≈ 5 × 10⁻⁴⁷, suggesting new anti-migraine gene-therapy targets.  
- Addgene promoted AAV-based gene-therapy vectors at SFN17 and published a primer on AAV design, while the channel noted that widespread complaints about gene therapy may signal its growing traction.  
- Discussion of DIY gene-therapy safety: participants argued that reckless self-experimentation should at least use useful plasmids, and proposed using post-mortem butcher-shop muscle to test electroporation parameters without human pain.  
- EspCas9 and SpCas9-HF1 high-fidelity nucleases were highlighted as tools for reducing CRISPR off-target effects.  
- A DEF CON 25 talk by John Sotos—“Genetic Diseases to Guide Digital Hacks of the Human Genome”—was circulated, exploring how known disease mutations can inform genome-level security exploits.  
- STARKs, Bulletproofs, and “Sharding PoW-based Blockchains via Proofs of Knowledge” were shared as cryptographic building blocks for scalable, transparent computational integrity systems.  
- Sci-Hub’s brief 403 outage and Tor downtime prompted debate on resilient hosting jurisdictions, with Seychelles mentioned as still viable for BitMEX but uncertain for Sci-Hub.  
- A culture_shock open-hardware project demonstrated live OLED readouts of high-voltage waveforms for electroporation experiments.