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.
A prion don't have RNA, and yet they can reproduce
They can "reproduce" only in very specific environmens where there are similar non-malformed proteins nearby. It would be very hard to have a similar problem with a mirrored molecule that picks one type of normal molecules and mirror them.
If this is such a powerful niche for an organism to be in, why haven't they already emerged naturally over the 3 billion year history of life on earth?
I think that's a great question! But I also think it's similar in a way to 'why matter and not antimatter' or 'why ~3d space rather than no structure' (much less obvious the second one!). But I think the real answer here is touched-on by nmstoker in a sibling comment: We're so far down the energy-gradient of the current-default-chirality on earth, that it would take exploration of an insanely-deep valley for all mole…
But then this is also an argument against spontaneous emergence of life, right? Sicne mirror-life could just emerge on its own, instead of evolving from regular life.
Some scientists in the Manhattan Project worried that the first nuclear test could trigger a chain reaction that would annihilate the earth. These fears were unfounded. (Granted, atmospheric nuclear weapons testing has its own set of subtle consequences that are gradually becoming more well known.)
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.)
Mirror symmetry breaks down in counter-intuitive ways in physics, that probably bubbles up into the chemistry side of things too. Not always, and not often. Probably just often enough to be confusing, and in this case, starkly terrifying and spirit-crushing.
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
Neither Argentina nor Brazil has ever had nuclear weapons, although both countries did historically produce low-grade enriched reactor fuel. Argentina resumed its enrichment activity in 02015. Brazil resumed its enrichment activity in 02006 but still does not have enough production capacity to supply even its minuscule fleet of nuclear power stations.
> Neither Argentina nor Brazil has ever had nuclear weapons
Brazil holds the key technologies to develop it and the sixth bigger deposit of uranium (with only 30% of the territory mapped). The navy is even currently developing a nuclear submarine that will be totally based on local technology.
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.)
Mirror symmetry breaks down in counter-intuitive ways in physics, that probably bubbles up into the chemistry side of things too. Not always, and not often. Probably just often enough to be confusing, and in this case, starkly terrifying and spirit-crushing.
> probably bubbles up into the chemistry side of things too
it never has so far. many experiments have been done, including an enzyme reaction
If this is such a powerful niche for an organism to be in, why haven't they already emerged naturally over the 3 billion year history of life on earth?
its not a powerful niche. theres just no food available. even autotrophs and prototrophs scavenge for fully formed chiral building blocks if possible because building ftom scratch is more energy intensive than recycling
Mirror symmetry breaks down in counter-intuitive ways in physics, that probably bubbles up into the chemistry side of things too. Not always, and not often. Probably just often enough to be confusing, and in this case, starkly terrifying and spirit-crushing.
> probably bubbles up into the chemistry side of things too it never has so far. many experiments have been done, including an enzyme reaction
Ok, sounds completely safe then. Go ahead and work on your mirror life frankenstein experiments, we should be good.
I'm really curious to know the details here. What is the minimal set of dependencies for the simplest autotroph? Clearly there was an original self-replicating cell and it was successful, so assuming we constructed the necessary proteins, why do you think it would be difficult the second time?
This is the big question about abiogenesis. If it was easy then life in the universe could be very common. If it is exceedingly difficult, we might be alone. What is the smallest set of molecules needed to self-replicate, and how common are the ingredients (& nutrients)? I believe all of this is completely unknown, but I havent looked into the research for years now.
syn 2.0? 3.0? is poking at the minimum set of genes for life, but that organism needs a lot of things to survive. i think it grows on horse serum