- Ginkgo Bioworks is highlighted in a CNBC piece as a synthetic-biology startup backed by Bill Gates, while a new Nature collection “Yeast 2.0 / SCRaMbLE” presents seven papers on engineering yeast with synthetic chromosomes.  
- A Cell Systems paper describes an iterative algorithm that designed a 10⁴-member yeast strain library to boost industrial production of itaconic acid, a dicarboxylic acid used in ABS plastics and coatings.  
- Mammoth Biosciences, co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, is developing an at-home CRISPR-based diagnostic kit aimed at consumer-accessible disease detection.  
- IARPA released the final BAA for the Molecular Information Storage (MIST) program, seeking technologies that store exabyte-scale digital data in DNA or other polymers; federal contractors and think tanks are already recruiting DNA-synthesis and nanopore-sequencing talent.  
- Discussion of robotics limitations centered on actuator packing, power density, and control: participants argued that rigid, high-precision actuators conflict with biomimetic compliance, while electroactive/thermoactive polymer muscles (e.g., Ray Baughman’s carbon-fiber actuators) and auxetic nanostructures were proposed as higher power-to-weight solutions.  
- Toyota’s T-HR3 teleoperated humanoid and the Shadow Dexterous Hand were cited as examples—remote human control can look fluid, but autonomous dynamic balance and latency compensation remain unsolved.  
- A biorxiv preprint introduced “Neural interactome,” an interactive simulation environment for whole neuronal systems, and Louis Scheffer (HHMI Janelia) bet that a full Drosophila connectome simulation will arrive within 5–10 years.  
- A Wall Street Journal article (archived in pastebin) reports blockchain “talent wars,” with crypto-startup developer salaries reaching $500 k for 3–5 years’ experience.  
- Bitcoin Gold suffered a double-spend attack costing exchanges millions; the incident was attributed to insufficient confirmation requirements on a minority fork.