ZAP // Dall-E 2
A category of synthetic organisms called “mirror life”, or “mirror life”whose component molecules are mirror images of their natural counterparts, could pose unprecedented risks to human life and ecosystemsaccording to a perspective article by renowned experts, including Nobel Prize winners, tells .
O, published in the magazine Science of December 12, is accompanied by an extensive report that outlines their concerns in detail.
“Motivated by curiosity and plausible applications, some researchers began working towards create life forms composed entirely of mirror biological molecules“, the researchers write in the magazine.
The ability to create mirror bacteria does not yet exist and is “at least a decade away,” they write, but progress is underway. Researchers can now synthesize mirrored biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins. At the same time, progress was made towards create synthetic cells from non-mirrored components.
“Such mirror organisms would constitute a radical departure from known life and their creation deserves careful analysis,” the scientists write.
However, they consider that life mirrored “It’s a genie that doesn’t want to let out of the bottle“, said the co-author of the report Jonathan Jones, leader of a group at Sainsbury Laboratory, in the United Kingdom. “The risk of something bad happening is low, but the consequences of something bad happening are really terrible“, he added, speaking to .
A possible practical application of mirror bacteria could be bioreactors, biological factories that use cells or microorganisms to manufacture various compounds, such as antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals. Bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) can destroy bacteria-based bioreactors, costing a lot of time and money, but they are unlikely to infect mirror bacteria because they would not recognize their molecules.
But now, “all the practical applications that drew us to this field are the reasons we are now terrified of him”explains the synthetic biologist Katarzyna Adamala, who led a 300-page paper on the topic, and on which the researchers who published the most recent article in Science were based.
But what are these consequences?
“We cannot exclude a scenario in which a mirror bacterium act as an invasive species in many ecosystemscausing widespread lethal infections in a substantial fraction of plant and animal species, including humans,” the scientists write in the report.
“Even a mirror bacterium with a more restricted host range and the ability to invade only a limited set of ecosystems could cause unprecedented and irreversible damage“.
At this time, researchers are discussing possible biosecurity measuressuch as the development of mirror phage viruses that could infect and kill bacteria mirror, but conclude that they are not likely to be a sufficient defense.
The synthetic biologist John Glass assumes that “none of the authors were able to present a countermeasure “We think we will be effective enough to save the biosphere from these organisms.”
