• A PNAS paper on how stimulus complexity modulates response correlations in primary visual cortex was shared and critiqued as “some of the most boring neuroscience out there,” highlighting ongoing debates about the value of incremental cortical mapping studies.

• Reuters coverage of the mirror-test in fish was circulated, suggesting that fish may possess previously unrecognized self-recognition abilities and prompting discussion about the boundaries of animal cognition.

• A Development journal article titled “CRISPR babies: a view from the centre of the storm” was linked, providing an insider perspective on the He Jiankui controversy and its implications for germline engineering governance.

• Multiple cutting-edge preprints were spotlighted:  
  – “Reconstruction of 1,000 projection neurons” (biorxiv 537233) mapping long-range connectivity in mouse neocortex.  
  – “Freeze-frame imaging of synaptic activity using SynTagMA” (biorxiv 538041) introducing a calcium-dependent fluorescent switch that captures active synapses within a ~2 s window.  
  – “Developmental barcoding of whole mouse via homing CRISPR” (Science 361, eaat9804) and its biorxiv companion (384925) demonstrating in-vivo molecular recording of embryogenesis by stochastically inserting heritable barcodes readable by single-cell sequencing.

• AAV-PHP.B capsid tropism was advanced by the discovery of LY6A as a novel receptor enabling efficient gene delivery across the blood–brain barrier (biorxiv 538421).

• Magnetogenetics received new empirical support: J.T. Robinson’s lab reported weak but selective magnetic-field responses in transfected cells and offered a mechanistic explanation (Biophysical Journal, linked via tweet).

• CRISPR-Cas13 was extended to targeted RNA cleavage and polyadenylation (biorxiv 531111), broadening the toolkit for post-transcriptional control.

• The Janelia ML-NeuronBrowser (ml-neuronbrowser.janelia.org) was publicized as an open resource for exploring large-scale mouse brain connectivity datasets.

• A provocative tweet thread by @smd4 envisioned “cellular stack traces”: ingestible pills that trigger tissue-specific barcodes to be secreted in saliva, enabling rapid whole-body diagnostics via sequencing—framing molecular recording as a near-term personalized medicine platform.

• A viral video (via @kashthefuturist) depicted a micromotor-assisted sperm delivery system, illustrating the convergence of nanorobotics and assisted reproduction technologies.