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Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

the-scientist.com

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Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#171

Post by mattclarkdotnet »

philipkglass wrote: post #4

The full report is here: "Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks" https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036 The premise reminds me of the "Rifters" trilogy by biologist and science fiction author Peter Watts. In it, an archaic deep sea microorganism "ßehemoth" that outcompetes all other kingdoms of life is brought to the surface and wreaks global havoc as it spreads. https://www.rifters.com/maelstrom/…

Peter Watts’ work is indeed bleak, harsh, but brilliant. I thought Blindsight was a hard read but the Rifters trilogy is another level

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#172

Post by kragen »

Aerroon wrote: post #164
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #156

That's sensationalism. Mirror bacteria would be at a severe disadvantage as there are no natural mirror aminoacids. Normal bacteria will quickly evolve to consume mirror aminoacids. And there are much much more normal bacteria than any possible mirror bacteria. They would be wiped out pretty quickly.

I thought the same thing initially, but I'm not as convinced after looking a bit more into it. Ie I think it's a possible risk. > as there are no natural mirror aminoacids. Normal bacteria will quickly evolve to consume mirror aminoacids. There are and they already have: > D-amino acids are toxic for life on Earth. Yet, they form constantly due to geochemical racemization and bacterial growth (the cell walls of which…

It would hardly be beyond plausibility for an ingenious researcher to solve the problem of having to feed her mirror bacteria expensive L-glucose by endowing them with an enzyme to enantiomerize cheap and abundant D-glucose. Or, as you implicitly suggest, for the genome she's using to contain such an enzyme already, lurking undetected.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#173

Post by kragen »

serial_dev wrote: post #163
efitz wrote: post #131

Maybe we should manufacture and stockpile mirror antibiotics, in case of accidental or intentional release of such organisms. This appeals to me both as a defensive/protective measure and as a deterrent to others who might look to weaponize such organisms.

This is how every arms race starts. "The baddies will use this as a weapon, so we need to get ahead of this, and manufacture the nastiest variants we can come up, so that we know how to DEFEND against them. It's defense, I say!"... Then eventually there is a lab leak, and there is a pandemic on your hand.

A lab leak of racemic sulfonilamide or ciprofloxacin would not only be a non-event; it's probably something that happens regularly already. The issue would be if people were harvesting their mirror penicillin from mirror mold or something.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#174

Post by kragen »

mr_toad wrote: post #14

I don’t understand why the innate immune response wouldn’t default to attacking an organism made of chiral molecules, since it attacks anything it doesn’t recognise. And while the adaptive immune response might not immediately recognise a novel organism, is there something that would prevent it ever adapting?

Well, not anything. I have glass embedded in my foot which isn't being attacked, for example, and there are plenty of examples of biocompatible polymers, many of them already used in medical implants.

(By the way, all organisms are made of chiral molecules; what we're talking about is reversing the chirality.)

Some of the things the immune system uses to attack things, such as superoxide, would work fine on mirror organisms. Others, such as antibodies to existing organisms, wouldn't work at all. I don't know what the balance is.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#175

Post by gus_massa »

throwup238 wrote: post #153
efitz wrote: post #131

Maybe we should manufacture and stockpile mirror antibiotics, in case of accidental or intentional release of such organisms. This appeals to me both as a defensive/protective measure and as a deterrent to others who might look to weaponize such organisms.

How would we test that the mirror antibiotics actually work without developing mirror organisms and exposing ourselves to the associated risks? They aren’t going to be mirror copies of terrestrial organisms, there’s no guarantee that mirror copies of our antibiotics will work (AFAIK it’s actually very unlikely). Protein binding sites change when mirrored because it’s not just mirror image but a change in how the prot…

Mirror antibiotics must work in mirror bacteria. Mirror proteins should fold exactly like normal proteins, but mirrored. (There may be a problem with the weak force, but I never heard it's used in biology.)

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#176

Post by megiddo »

mattclarkdotnet wrote: post #171
philipkglass wrote: post #4

The full report is here: "Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks" https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036 The premise reminds me of the "Rifters" trilogy by biologist and science fiction author Peter Watts. In it, an archaic deep sea microorganism "ßehemoth" that outcompetes all other kingdoms of life is brought to the surface and wreaks global havoc as it spreads. https://www.rifters.com/maelstrom/…

Peter Watts’ work is indeed bleak, harsh, but brilliant. I thought Blindsight was a hard read but the Rifters trilogy is another level

Made me stop reading for awhile.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#177

Post by kragen »

btilly wrote: post #99
harimau777 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great framework for assessing it, thank you! It seems to me that to a degree nuclear weapons show some of the problems with a research ban. I think that it's possible that nuclear weapons are proliferating just very slowly. The problem seems to be that once someone engages in forbidden research, then their rivals feel the need to as well. E.g. we allowed China to get a nuclear weapon so India decided they ne…

Several other countries also gave them up with better results. Including South Africa, Sweden, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Belarus and Kazakhstan are vassal states of Russia now and for the foreseeable future; possibly they will be annexed officially at some point, like the Crimea and probably Donbas. Sweden would probably still be neutral if it hadn't given up its nuclear weapons; it seems to be at significant risk of being invaded by Russia again (it was invaded in the 18th century and again in the 19th), which is why it joined NATO in March. That, in turn, puts it at great risk of going to war this decade even if it doesn't get invaded, for the first time in 200 years.

It's unclear if Belarus and Kazakhstan really had nukes in the first place such that they could "give them up"—as with Ukraine, the nukes stationed there were Soviet nukes, controlled by Moscow.

South Africa does seem to be doing okay, though. It's not that likely to be invaded by Zimbabwe, and since the end of apartheid, a civil war is looking increasingly unlikely.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#178

Post by gus_massa »

baranul wrote: post #139
andrewflnr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an antibody to a correct-handed antigen would not automatically bind the mirror I wouldn't expect it to, but rather I'd expect the immune system to learn the new antigen just like it learned the old one.

Unfortunately, seems the only way to figure this out is by testing. But on the flip, nobody can really trust that it won't accidentally or purposefully escape from labs.

They can create a few mirrored proteins and sugars and test them. Without RNA (and a lot of additional machinery) the proteins and sugars will not start to spontaneusly reproduce to conquer the word.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#179

Post by sabbaticaldev »

btilly wrote: post #99
harimau777 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great framework for assessing it, thank you! It seems to me that to a degree nuclear weapons show some of the problems with a research ban. I think that it's possible that nuclear weapons are proliferating just very slowly. The problem seems to be that once someone engages in forbidden research, then their rivals feel the need to as well. E.g. we allowed China to get a nuclear weapon so India decided they ne…

Several other countries also gave them up with better results. Including South Africa, Sweden, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Argentina, Brazil. although they say brazil is just a few days away of developing a nuclear bomb if it decides to. It would not be able to throw it anywhere useful tho at maximum south american neighbors

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#180

Post by cogman10 »

danwills wrote: post #157
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #156

That's sensationalism. Mirror bacteria would be at a severe disadvantage as there are no natural mirror aminoacids. Normal bacteria will quickly evolve to consume mirror aminoacids. And there are much much more normal bacteria than any possible mirror bacteria. They would be wiped out pretty quickly.

I reckon I generally agree that it's very unlikely that mirror-bacteria would be viable in the wild! This is covered in the article in 2 ways though: It says that some nutrients (like glycerol) are achiral - this might mean they could still find a food source in a regular-chirality world. It also mentions that the mirror-bacterial nonstandard-chirality might 'cloak' them from regular-chirality predators (or immune-sy…

I think regular microbiology would pretty quickly adapt to the mirrors. Evolution is crazy that way.

But multicellular organisms would be at a huge disadvantage. We don't have offspring every second, so adapting to the mirrors would be nearly impossible. They'd be able to cause havoc in plant and animal life that has mechanisms for dealing with regular bacteria.

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