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.
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 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:
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
you know what they say about assumptions
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:
The Right handed configuration had the desired effects and isn’t harmful.
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
it’s in the article: because of fAsCiNaTiOn!
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.
“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”.
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.
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.