Another fascinating article below. Are the Dr. Frankenstein’s of science overreaching again and will mankind’s curiosity lead to a doomsday scenario?
What is mirror life? Scientists are sounding the alarm
https://archive.is/paHdv
Excerpt below from full article in link above.
[Doomsday scenarios
Dozens of experts met at a two-day conference on engineering and safeguarding synthetic life in Manchester, UK, in September to discuss where red lines should be drawn to restrict research into technologies that could enable the creation of mirror organisms.
“There is the possibility that, with admittedly a great deal of work, we could create something which could grow inexorably, spread across the planet and displace or kill many, many forms of life, including us, the animals around us, the plants around us, and even some of the microbes,” said David Relman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, who attended the meeting at the University of Manchester’s Institute of Biotechnology.
Relman, like Adamala, was one of the early members of the working group and remembered keeping initial conversations under wraps. “We didn’t want to be unduly alarmist. We also didn’t want to sound like crackpots,” he recalled. “I think we all hoped that we would quickly learn there was some fatal flaw in this logic, but it started to bother me enough to wake me up at night.”
Their alarm stemmed from the fact that, because natural life is chiral, interactions between natural organisms and mirror bacteria would be profoundly unpredictable. While the first mirror bacterium would likely be extremely fragile, limiting its growth and survival, it could persist, given the right nutrients. Ultimately, it might act like an invasive species, disrupting ecosystems without predators to keep it in check.
Relman said mirror bacteria could potentially evade critical parts of plant, animal and human immune systems, which would have difficulty detecting or killing them.]
https://archive.is/paHdv
Excerpt below from full article in link above.
[Doomsday scenarios
Dozens of experts met at a two-day conference on engineering and safeguarding synthetic life in Manchester, UK, in September to discuss where red lines should be drawn to restrict research into technologies that could enable the creation of mirror organisms.
“There is the possibility that, with admittedly a great deal of work, we could create something which could grow inexorably, spread across the planet and displace or kill many, many forms of life, including us, the animals around us, the plants around us, and even some of the microbes,” said David Relman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, who attended the meeting at the University of Manchester’s Institute of Biotechnology.
Relman, like Adamala, was one of the early members of the working group and remembered keeping initial conversations under wraps. “We didn’t want to be unduly alarmist. We also didn’t want to sound like crackpots,” he recalled. “I think we all hoped that we would quickly learn there was some fatal flaw in this logic, but it started to bother me enough to wake me up at night.”
Their alarm stemmed from the fact that, because natural life is chiral, interactions between natural organisms and mirror bacteria would be profoundly unpredictable. While the first mirror bacterium would likely be extremely fragile, limiting its growth and survival, it could persist, given the right nutrients. Ultimately, it might act like an invasive species, disrupting ecosystems without predators to keep it in check.
Relman said mirror bacteria could potentially evade critical parts of plant, animal and human immune systems, which would have difficulty detecting or killing them.]
56-60, M