- Lungfish possess a three-layered cerebral cortex, pushing the evolutionary origin of the cortex back to ~400 million years ago—close to the Cambrian explosion—according to a tweet by Albert Cardona.  
- Cameo, a new open-source Python library for computer-aided metabolic engineering and optimization of cell factories, was highlighted along with its web-based sandbox at http://try.cameo.bio/.  
- Two recent reviews on cell-free synthetic biology were shared: one on microfluidic cell-free systems (PMC5867865) and another on bacterial chemical communication within emulsion-droplet chains (C5IB00301F).  
- A Nature paper, “Planning chemical syntheses with deep neural networks and symbolic AI,” describes a retrosynthesis engine trained on nearly every published organic reaction, using a filter network to rank synthetic steps.  
- USDA announced it will not regulate CRISPR-edited plants if the same genotype could have been achieved by conventional breeding, a policy shift celebrated as a major win for plant bioengineers.  
- Gizmodo coverage was circulated showing that the widely reported CRISPR off-target effects could not be reproduced, questioning the initial panic.  
- Kanzure floated the idea of adding reputational-reporting clauses to open-source licenses to require users to disclose where the software is deployed.  
- A DARPA-style garage project was mentioned: nmz787 reorganized his garage to make space for setting up a focused-ion-beam (FIB) system for nanofabrication.