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Basic biochemistry question (you can tell what I didn't study in uni) Is it possible to mix chirality in, say, a protein? I.e. have a portion of one chirality and another of the other?
Searching HN for "mirror cells", I see at least 1 article warning of the dangers from more than 10 years ago. So, this has been a thing for a while. Any biologists here that can chime in on just how big of a risk they do pose? Is there a general consensus throughout the community that this research should end? Is this something that could be developed for bio-terrorism? Should work be started on developing mirror imm…
Mirror life would have no interoperability with normal life, in biochemical terms. Say, if a predator attacked a mirror bacteria, and ate it, it would be just like eating an inedible microplastic particle. A technological analogue would be to change tensions in electric outlets at random, between 115V and 230V standards, with no indication of which outlet has which tension. People would start blowing equipment left a…
The parts would be similar enough to form bonds and trigger receptors, but different enough to become permanently stuck, unable to be processed.
Why not create mirror viruses to infect these mirror bacteria? And mirror predators to consume the mirror bacteria. Or compound microbes that can eat both mirror bacteria and regular bacteria, so that we can deploy them before we create mirror bacteria. For example, there is already a bacterium that can eat L-sugar, which is a mirror of regular sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-Glucose Once the mirror creature i…
Searching HN for "mirror cells", I see at least 1 article warning of the dangers from more than 10 years ago. So, this has been a thing for a while. Any biologists here that can chime in on just how big of a risk they do pose? Is there a general consensus throughout the community that this research should end? Is this something that could be developed for bio-terrorism? Should work be started on developing mirror imm…
Mirror life would have no interoperability with normal life, in biochemical terms. Say, if a predator attacked a mirror bacteria, and ate it, it would be just like eating an inedible microplastic particle. A technological analogue would be to change tensions in electric outlets at random, between 115V and 230V standards, with no indication of which outlet has which tension. People would start blowing equipment left a…
Most critically, metabolic pathways.
But that isn't to say there isn't already varied chirality in nature [0]. The primary reason life is generally aligned to one chirality is because its very purpose is to interoperate with the living environment around it.
Basic biochemistry question (you can tell what I didn't study in uni) Is it possible to mix chirality in, say, a protein? I.e. have a portion of one chirality and another of the other?
How much achiral food would be available for these bacteria anyways in nature? They'd have to compete for it with all other life.
Basic biochemistry question (you can tell what I didn't study in uni) Is it possible to mix chirality in, say, a protein? I.e. have a portion of one chirality and another of the other?
Yes. Some bacteria have D-amino acids (such as D-alanine) as part of their cell walls (which otherwise contain almost entirely L-amino acids). D-amino acids are also sometimes incorporated into drugs that are synthetic peptide mimics in order to slow metabolism.
Thanks! I think that was the notecard in a dusty corner of my mind that was nagging.
Basic biochemistry question (you can tell what I didn't study in uni) Is it possible to mix chirality in, say, a protein? I.e. have a portion of one chirality and another of the other?
its basically impossible (but not totally impossible) for a living creature to be able to generate any protein with mixed chiralities.
this is because a ribosome with a chamber that can support both chiralities is likely to be less efficient at protein extension. but also you need so much more trna if you want to support arbitrary d-amino acids, etc.
Basic biochemistry question (you can tell what I didn't study in uni) Is it possible to mix chirality in, say, a protein? I.e. have a portion of one chirality and another of the other?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grey goo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo AI paperclips https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/ai-and-paperclip-problem Prions getting into food supply Nuclear holocaust. I’m definitely not sleeping tonight. I can see why Gen Z is thinking not to have kids…
Environmental collapse due to climate change is way, way more likely than any of those.
Can humanity peacefully deal with things like half of China becoming uninhabitable by humans? Dunno but if I had to pit humanity against this or the mirror bacteria I'd choose the latter.