- Researchers at Yale kept pig brains alive for up to 36 hours outside the body using a closed-loop perfusion system, raising questions about the definition of death and the possibility of reviving post-mortem neural activity.  
- A new pre-print describes a phagemid-based method to produce custom DNA-origami scaffolds, potentially lowering the cost and turnaround time for large, user-defined DNA structures used in nanotechnology and synthetic biology.  
- The #hplusroadmap channel discussed scraping the DOI resolver and Crossref metadata to create a resilient, open archive of scholarly references before paywalls or service shutdowns become a single point of failure.  
- A 93-million-DOI, 29 GB Crossref dump from January 2018 was located on archive.org, offering a near-complete snapshot of the open citation graph for offline or mirror use.  
- DARPA’s latest podcast episode, “The Genomineer,” features program manager Renee Wegrzyn outlining efforts to advance synthetic biology while proactively managing biosecurity and dual-use risks.  
- MIT Technology Review covered the pig-brain perfusion study, highlighting its implications for brain-computer interfaces, cryonics, and the ethical boundaries of resuscitation research.  
- Channel participants debated the scalability and cost of continuous-flow microreactors for pharmaceutical precursor synthesis, noting their advantages in heat transfer, safety, and modular scale-up.  
- Concerns were raised that commercial chemical suppliers routinely mark up reagents 20- to 100-fold over bulk pricing, prompting discussion of group buys and direct sourcing strategies for biohacker labs.