Morgan McFall-Johnsen of Business Insider reports that while creating “mirror life” microorganisms could be one of science’s greatest breakthroughs, 38 scientists have raised alarms about the potential dangers. In a paper published in Science on December 12, they warned that if such organisms were created and escaped the lab, they could trigger a catastrophic multi-species pandemic. Kate Adamala, a co-author and chemist at the University of Minnesota, emphasized the risks, likening the research to creating a “perfect bioweapon.” Mcafall-Johnson writes:
Creating “mirror life” could be one of science’s greatest breakthroughs, but some researchers who began the effort are now calling for it to stop.
No mirror-life microorganisms exist yet. However, 38 scientists warned in a paper published in the journal Science on December 12 that if someone created one and it escaped the lab, it could cause a catastrophic multi-species pandemic.
“We’re basically giving instructions of how to make a perfect bioweapon,” Kate Adamala, a co-author of the paper and a chemist who leads a synthetic biology lab at the University of Minnesota, told Business Insider. […]
Now she’s urging other scientists to do the same, along with the 37 other researchers.
“Although we were initially skeptical that mirror bacteria could pose major risks, we have become deeply concerned,” they wrote in the paper. […]
“You could have this perfect bioreactor that can just sit there and you can stick your finger into it and you’re not going to contaminate it,” Adamala said. “That’s also precisely the problem.”
A mirror bacteria could bypass the natural checks and balances of life, like competing with other bacteria or battling our immune systems. […]
Immune cells recognize pathogens’ proteins, but they wouldn’t detect the inverse versions of those proteins that mirror cells would use.
A mirror pathogen “doesn’t interact with the host. It just uses it as a warm incubator with a lot of nutrients,” Adamala said.
If a mirror bacteria escaped the lab, it could cause slow, persistent infections that can’t be treated with antibiotics (because those, too, rely on chirality). […]
“No one can do it on their own right now,” Adamala said. “The technology is not mature enough, which means we’re pretty well safeguarded against someone crazy enough to say, ‘I’ll just go do it.'”
In the meantime, Adamala and the other paper authors invited more research and scrutiny on the risks they’ve identified.
“If someone does prove us wrong, that would make me really happy,” she said.
Read more here.
