Summary
Leading scientists, including Nobel laureates, are urging a halt to research on creating “mirror life” microbes, citing “unprecedented risks” to life on Earth.
Mirror microbes, built from reversed molecular structures, could evade natural immune systems, leading to uncontrollable lethal infections.
While mirror molecules hold potential for medical and industrial uses, researchers warn that mirror organisms could escape containment and resist antibiotics.
A 299-page report in Science advocates banning such research until safety can be ensured and calls for global debate on its ethical and ecological implications.
Regardless of whether such an organism is a danger, there’s no way we can even come close to creating an entire organism with an opposite chirality in just a decade. That would require somehow synthesizing every chiral component of the organism (proteins, enzymes, DNA, etc) from scratch which is completely impossible with current or near future technology.
I’ve been out of synthetic bio for damn near two decades now, and an undergrad when was I even in it, but I’m not so sure. PCR didn’t come around until 85. I had professors that used to do every cycle manually. Human genome project wrapped in 03(?). You can order custom oligos for like $0.13USD a base pair mail order now. You type it in on a webform, a machine creates a custom molecule for you, and if you want to pay a little extra you can have it over-night. I suppose it depends what you call “near future”, and synthetic biology has always had moving goal posts when it came to “functional liposome” and “synthetic life”, but I don’t know… shit can move fast sometimes.
What if we kissed with molecules of opposite chirality?
Hey babe, wake up. A new human-created, extinction-level event just dropped.
Meh, we get a new one of those every year now. They’ll have to try harder to impress me.
Fuck, again?
We just need to make mirror people that live in the mirror microbe side of the world
Yeah, we need more conflict. We’ll create the ultimate “them” for us to “us” against. Contact with them is literally lethal! Can’t get more conflict than that… yet.
Oh for fuck’s sake, we already know that mirror molecules can have disastrously unexpected side-effects on people, so why on Earth would we make an entire mirror organism that’s has the potential to do the same but way, way worse!
I don’t see any mention in there of Thalidomide being a mirror molecule, do you have a source for that?
Fair. I had thought that article with the scandel would mention it, but apparently doesn’t. Only the main article does.
It has two possible configurations:
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The Right handed configuration had the desired effects and isn’t harmful.
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The Left handed mirror caused birth defects.
Oh and the best part is, if you try to make a pure mixture of the right handed version, it can convert to the left handed one in the body!
why the fuck would it be mentioned. thalidomide is synthetic, article is about wrong enantiomer of natural compounds working in a living organism that has unnatural chirality. that teratogenic effect of thalidomide was figured out and is now used in anticancer treatments. it’s a tool, and if you use it right it can be useful. that thing in article is highly speculative as of now and making any component would be hideously expensive anyway
Correct. It’s also a much simpler organic molecule than any of the proteins they are talking about creating.
Man, you ain’t gotta be rude.
I meant the article I linked to the Thalidomide scandal. I was surprised that chirality wasn’t mentioned even once in the wiki article about it causing birth defects, considering it’s chirality was a key factor in that scandal.
I know it wouldn’t be in the OP article because they’re only minorly related instances, but my point was tjat we already know what mirroring even a simple compound can do to living things, nevermind complex proteins and entire organisms.
And IMO, using arguably the single most widely known instance of mirror chemicals gone wrong to make that point is perfectly valid.
Yes, but like any tool, if there’s no safeguards, it will could do unimaginable damage (which is also why I used Thalidomide as an example, as it inspired literally tonnes of safeguards post-scandel). Like GMOs can be dangerous as is, but at least in most instances it’s only the living organism itself that’s dangerous. With mirroring, any part of that organism could be dangerous to normal lifeforms, so even sterilised mirror waste could be dangerous
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why on Earth would we make an entire mirror organism that’s has the potential to do the same but way, way worse
it’s in the article: because of fAsCiNaTiOn!
I know I just responded, but I read the article, and the drug page, and discovered the thing we’re talking about. Racemic organic molecules are not the same thing here.
These are specifically proteins used for cellular life. These are significantly more complex, as there are no natural bindings between the two. To note this from Wikipedia:
Examples include thalidomide, ibuprofen, cetirizine and salbutamol. A well known drug that has different effects depending on its ratio of enantiomers is amphetamine. Adderall is an unequal mixture of both amphetamine enantiomers. A single Adderall dose combines the neutral sulfate salts of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, with the dextro isomer of amphetamine saccharate and D/L-amphetamine aspartate monohydrate. The original Benzedrine was a racemic mixture, and isolated dextroamphetamine was later introduced to the market as Dexedrine. The prescription analgesic tramadol is also a racemate.
We know that those drugs aren’t great in pregnancy, but Adderall specifically does not cause birth defects. Again, these molecules are significantly less complex than any protein they would talk about here.
I know they’re not directly related, but my point, as I said to @skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de, is that we already know even simple mirroring molecules can do to living things, nevermind complex proteins and entire organisms.
lf there’s no proper safeguards, it could do unimaginable damage (which is also why I used Thalidomide as an example, as it inspired literally tonnes of safeguards post-scandel).
Like GMOs can be dangerous as is, but at least in most instances it’s only the living organism itself that’s dangerous. With mirroring, any part of that organism could be dangerous to normal lifeforms, so even sterilised mirror waste could be dangerous
Some mirrored compounds are dangerous by coincidence. It’s not that mirrored compounds are inherently dangerous.
Non-mirrored compounds can be incredibly dangerous, often because the organisms that produce them evolved to be dangerous. Take botulinum toxin, for example.
What would make mirrored life dangerous would be if it could escape to the wild and increase its biomass there. Non-living toxins can be deadly, but at least they don’t self-perpetuate. Even prions are limited in how they “reproduce.” They are nothing like the threat of viruses.
you’re missing the point so hard i’m not even sure where should i begin. thalidomide is synthetic, it didn’t exist before it was made for the first time in lab. there’s no way to tell which one is “right” and which one is “mirrored” this is nonsense. it is completely normal for pharmaceuticals to have different activities depending on enantiomer, sometimes one is weaker and one is stronger but both act at the same receptor/enzyme, sometimes one has one activity and one does something completely different, like slow down breakdown of the other, but most of the time one is active and the other does nothing.
the point of that thing is that maybe, perhaps, lifeforms based on d-aminoacids and l-sugars could evade immune response, and that’s rather speculative. not to mention incomprehensible barriers to making this all work in the first place. d-aminoacids exist in nature, if not all of them, and normal organisms can metabolise them. proteins made out of d-aminoacids degrade slower, but it doesn’t mean that there are no mechanisms to destroy these things. similarly i don’t think it’ll be impossible to generate immune response to wrong chirality bacteria, humans generate antibodies against things like PEG, important thing for antibodies is how external shape of these things looks like and this will be rather unique
i don’t think it’ll be impossible to generate immune response to wrong chirality bacteria
you know what they say about assumptions
Well that answers my question if mirror cells need mirror molecules.
They just die and break apart turning into mirror molecules. Oh well.
So the biomass of the mirror organisms will not increase in nature?
Yes, it cannot be created naturally.
The concern is that if one of the mirror proteins is able to be cloned naturally, then we would have a problem on our hands.
However, those mirror cells would need a supply of “mirror food” such as “mirror sugar” in order to survive their natural lifespan. And then they would need to break apart into the mirror proteins that can be cloned. Racemic drugs like Thalidomide do not behave the way they are talking about in the article.
I have my doubts that this is an actual concern. It’s not even similar to prions - prions are misfolded proteins that have the same chemical make up, but the natural enzymes end up cloning those over the natural ones because they are easier to make.
Jumping in down here. I agree with you entirely that racemic mixes are a very different ball than mirror organisms; it’s been a known thing for a long time, and while I’m not positive, I’d be very surprised if FDA testing didn’t include different chiralities of both the original compound and metabolite.
That being said, there’s nothing to say one version of a chiral protein can’t behave like a prion. I don’t know of any evidence where we’ve seen it happen either, though. There’s also potentially the issue of partial bonding. Not every domain on every protein is chiral. If a mirror protein has some domains that bind but other functional domains that are incompatible, you could see it incorporated into complex that either 1) are now non-functional or 2) have alternate folding that behaves similar to prions.
Again though, I can’t point to any evidence of that. You can do the arrow pushing that shows how you get tetrodoxin from the stuff in your tea or coffee, it doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen beyond the statistical realm interesting only to quantum physicists.
Just chiming in because your comments are level headed and you’ve clearly got some knowledge in the area and appreciate the discussion. Looking forward to digging into the report this weekend, I had no idea this was even something are even attempting!
Agreed. And while deadly, prions don’t spread except through living organisms. It’s not like they’re converting all the proteins in the world without check.
“mirror sugar”. Just dropping some trivia. The first “no calorie” sweetners were actually mirror sugar. They’d activate tastebuds but couldn’t be adsorbed in the gut. Only problem was people crapped their brains out because the osmotic balance went to hell.
edit: I think technically the first zero calorie sugar would have been literal lead (as in Pb) back in the ancient roman days, but I’m not really counting that.
See I didn’t know that, cool thanks
you bet! I just remember that because we were learning about glucose is taken up (it’s an active process swapping sodium and potassium). Another fun bonus for you: thats what they figured out at university of florida (or at least implemented). Someone had the bright idea that if you gave athletes a beverage with not only glucose but the specific K+/Na+ they needed to run the enzymes that took up the glucose, they might perform better.
So the football team, the Gators, got a special concoction of “Gator-aide” at their games. It smelled kinda like sweat, wasn’t sweet (glucose isn’t actually that sweet), so the formula was eventually tweaked, the branding changed to “gatorade”, but the university still RAKES in the money for that license.
edit: Just to add another cool layer. The money to date has nothing to do with the innovation, that patent would have expired (which is fantastic because that concoction is basically how you treat all sorts of things like cholera where the body dies of dehydration despite having clean water, the UN, FEMA, etc basically hands out off-brand gatorade mix). The reason U of florida still gets the money isn’t formula, it’s the brand. Pepsi pays them for that “gator-aide” name. It’s rare IP perfect win; hydration mix for all, and if you there’s a business to be made selling it under a specific name so be it, doesn’t matter much to the person whos life is saved because of “generic hydration mix”.
Depends if the mirror organisms in question can photosynthesize
ooooh this is it! If you wanted to optimize evil add photosynthesis and nitrogen fixing and you’ve got it.
Hell, I’d bet you could work on the chloroplasts in isolation of the rest of the organism to parallel path the research and optimize.
Mirror molecules that by themselves could easily pose a risk to anyone exposed by them.
My point in even mentioning Thalidomide was that we already know what mirroring even a simple compound can do to living things, nevermind complex proteins and entire organisms.
GMOs can be dangerous as is without proper safeguards, but at least in most instances it’s only the living organism itself that’s dangerous. With mirroring, any part of that organism could be dangerous to normal lifeforms, so even sterilised mirror waste could be dangerous
It’s worth bearing in mind that opposite chirality is not inherently dangerous. Whether an individual mirror molecule poses a problem depends on the specific biochemical context. While there have been famous situations where a chiral enantiomer proved toxic, for every one of these there’s been plenty more instances where biology shrugs and doesn’t gaf.
Does this mean we shouldn’t worry? Obviously not, but it just means we should do more to manage the general risks of molecular engineering for microbes. Chirality is only one of many, many routes through which risks can come, so there’s no point fixating on that.
Just wait until we start making mirror vaccines, the antivax folks heads will explode.
This sounds horrifying, but if they do make them I hope they all have little goaties.
Why we need a moon base with an unconnected section where everything is done by robots
Yea, I’d definitely trust us with that… we could probably get one of our highly trust worthy billionaires to run it.
Maybe we could equip this moon base equipped with civilization ending microbes with a giant laser just in case sending the bio weapon back to earth seems too expensive to the board members?
If the world wants it banned, you can be sure China and Russia are working on it in secret labs, maybe USA too anyway.
Like when the UN banned buying uranium from apartheid south Africa mines but everyone kept buying anyway
Yeah, knowing how fucky simple protein molecules can get when you flip the chirality (prions, which are essentially the root cause of Alzheimer’s and CJD and a few other neurodegenerative conditions), making whole-ass microbes on that principle without understanding what that could even mean sounds like a WILDLY insane idea.
Not to nit but we absolutely do not know the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Not that prions are good or anything.
Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to imply that’s all that is going on with Alzheimer’s, but I was under the impression that prion formation/presence in neurological tissue was extremely highly correlated with the condition, though the precise mechanism of their effects aren’t yet well understood. Then again, I haven’t seriously looked into that stuff since my grandfather passed from it a while ago.
Sorry about your grandfather. There’s probably more than one mechanism for alzeimers (not an expert), but amaloyid plaque formation, which is definitely A way to develop alzheimer’s, is indeed a prion like event. I’m not sure if “prion” has some hyper-precise definition but the ideas similar: you get one amalyoid protein that misfolds, and acts as a nucleation site misfolding and agglomerating others.
Prions aren’t a chirality issue, they’re a folding issue
As always, some people see Jurassic Park as inspiration and wonder why nobody gave Hammond a chance.
The rest of us know that Dr. Malcolm was right from the start.
Jurassic Park at least makes sense because dinosaurs are cool.
Opposite-chirality microbes, though? Nobody asked for that.
To be fair, whoever designed that park was a moron.
Ok. THANK YOU. I also have to say my biggest issue with the newer one (I forget which) is when the parks going to hell, and the park director just decides to go off into the jungle. Like outside of just design of the park, there is NO way you don’t have rigid protocols in-place. Like you read about half the crap Disney does/can do at their parks… there’s no way the head of the park just goes “oh you guys got this, I’ll be back at some point, just do your best”.
Like if ONLY for the reason it would be a known PR disaster for something that in universe already had PR disasters… that shit would have been drilled in since day -1000. It’s my biggest issue with the writing because it’s not even sci-fi.
/end rant.
That’s what you get when you treat your IT like crap and only hire one person.
Newman didn’t built the park though. If you require power for the park to not fall apart immediately, you’ve already lost.
Remember that whole movie happens in one night. T rexes breaking confinement the moment the fence isn’t electrified means some engineer fucked up big time.
I mean IT people just sit around all day on the computer anyway
Yeah, people in real life won’t be morons, so that would never happen to us. I’m sure the company giving us the lowest bid has probably found some heretofore unknown innovation in efficiency. The end result will be just as good, but way cheaper…
Prions are comprised of right-handed amino acids. I don’t think it’s the same thing to flip the chirality of a molecule as to flip the chirality of its subcomponents. DNA is usually right-handed, but there are left-handed forms created naturally. They don’t suddenly annihilate their counterparts in antimatter-like collisions.
There are natural pharmaceuticals that consist of both chiralities, and obviously plenty of synthetic ones.
It’s really not that simple. If we want to think about it longer, fine by me. But what is the real threat level?
Edit: As others have pointed out, prions also aren’t an example of a different chirality of the native protein. The issue with prions is they can convert the native protein to their form, which “reproduces” themselves to make the disease progress. Mirrored organisms will propagate the chirality of their components, but their components don’t inherently convert their enantiomers once that organism is dead.
I don’t know, seems like it could be merciful.
Start back over again with the microbes and try to do a better job this time.
Yeah, but then they’d all be dark reflections of ourselves that we have to battle after the final boss.
I think we’ve proven that we’re the dark reflection.
How would we all look with goatees the next time around?
I’m more of a friendly mutton chops kind of guy myself, but as long as I don’t have to shave my upper lip, I’ll do the Evil Spock thing.
even the most impotent limp dicked authoritarian gets a raging boner over tech that will cause mass human death. the more apocalyptic, the better. as such, this might just be the only research that will be govt funded in the near future
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I also remember Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but they’re unrelated to this as well.
Should we treat this any differently than the way we treat research with dangerous pathogens?
Because apparently the only way to get rid of it is extreme incineration.
This isn’t viral or bacterial, where just a little bit of heat, UV or decay will kill it.
When someone dies of prion disease, they need to incinerate everything. Clothes/Body/Beds, the whole thing.
These are nightmare fuel.
Exactly this!
For the most part Pathogens and even GMOs are only present an environmental threat in their living form, and once properly sterilised, can be disposed of safely.
These mirror organisms would be dangerous in living and dead form, as they’d be chuck full of mirror proteins and biological molescules, any of which could trigger an environmental disaster if released by accident, so they’d have to be completely destroyed to be safe.
Without proper regulations to ensure proper safeguards are in place, continued research into these organisms is plain dangerous
These mirror organisms would be dangerous in living and dead form, as they’d be chuck full of mirror proteins and biological molescules, any of which could trigger an environmental disaster if released by accident
where are you getting this from? dead bacteria don’t come back to life
UV or heat, or ethylene oxide and a number of other things still would kill wrong chirality bacteria, these are not prions, where are you people are getting this from
A 299-page report in Science advocates banning such research until safety can be ensured and calls for global debate on its ethical and ecological implications
Which will not be read or followed!
Weeeeee! Maybe i die of superflu instead of hunger or jackboot
I don’t think viruses are the major concern here, viruses need to be compatible with our cells and DNA or RNA. It’s bacteria and other simplistic life forms that could infect our body and be largely invisible to our immune system.
Prions on steroids.
A biological hate machine
Yeah, this should probably be approached from the angle of “someone might do this, so we should do research to be prepared”.
Research ways to improve containment to reduce the chance of an accidental containment breach.
And research ways to quickly determine the weaknesses of such synthetic lifeforms if a breach happens anyways. Also to be prepared in case someone deliberately weaponizes it.
By the way, this kind of thing is why IMO if we ever do find extra terrestrial life, attempting to make any kind of physical contact or even land on the planet might end up dooming both our own species (and maybe all current complex life on Earth) as well as any complex life on that other planet. They could have basic forms of life that are entirely different from our own and completely invisible to our immune systems.
Though it would probably also have cool results in a few hundred million years, after microbial life has evolved defenses and perhaps some hybridizations.
Because when you discover something exceptionally dangerous the best approach is to halt research? To purposefully deprive yourself of understanding what it is and how it works and effects and interactions? Wouldn’t you want more research, just under more strict protocols?
Do you assume these scientists are fearful anti-intellectuals, like a gaggle of Covidiots or something? If you read the article, you’ll find that
The expert group includes Dr Craig Venter, the US scientist who led the private effort to sequence the human genome in the 1990s, and the Nobel laureates Prof Greg Winter at the University of Cambridge and Prof Jack Szostak at the University of Chicago.
These aren’t idiots, and their call came from a risk assessment performed by experts in their fields.
While enthusiastic about research on mirror molecules, the report sees substantial risks in mirror microbes and calls for a global debate on the work. link to the 299-page report
Beyond causing lethal infections, the researchers doubt the microbes could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and predators.
…
Dr Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota and co-author on the report, was working towards a mirror cell but changed tack last year after studying the risks in detail.
“We should not be making mirror life,” she said. “We have time for the conversation. And that’s what we were trying to do with this paper, to start a global conversation.”
“Unless compelling evidence emerges that mirror life would not pose extraordinary dangers, we believe that mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms, even those with engineered biocontainment measures, should not be created,” the authors write in Science.
“We therefore recommend that research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria not be permitted, and that funders make clear that they will not support such work.”
World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.
I’m not saying the scientists involved are idiots, but the reporting on this seems to be ban now and ask questions later.
Well, yeah. Ban now, run simulations to ask and answer questions later.
