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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

#61

Post by ninininino »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #43
conqueso wrote: post #17

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…

no. antibodies will work just fine on a d-protein and one of their mechanisms of killing is to generate ozone, which is an achiral molecule. there is currently ~no risk because generating mirror life is such a monumental task. we dont have a full biological bootstrap sequence currently. even syn1.0 which was a synthetic genome transplant and rebooting operation, required a living host cell to transplant the DNA into,…

I don't think anyone is worried about mirror proteins by themselves, they are worried about someone assembling a self-replicating/self-propagating mirror life, no? In which case, the fear is that you can't just run around ozone-ing every little colony of chiral-mirror version of cyanobacteria under every rock in remote Siberia or wherever.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#62

Post by harimau777 »

krisoft wrote: post #54
harimau777 wrote: post #10

How does a research ban even work? It seems to me that at some point someone is going to research it; at which point everyone is left flat footed by having not researched it.

> How does a research ban even work? It seems to me that at some point someone is going to research it; This is a function of how easy it is to do the banned thing, how easy it is to detect when it is being researched and what are the benefits of researching it. Imagine as an example that we live in a world where there are no firearms, and we decide to ban their research and development. All three factors would be ag…

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 needed one which led to Pakistan needing one. More currently, we allowed Israel to get nuclear weapons so now Iran is likely trying to get them.

It's also notable that the two instances where people gave up nuclear weapons, Gaddafi and Ukraine; have both ended poorly for the people who gave them up.

All this to say, I wonder if it might be possible to slow research on a subject but not to stop it completely.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#63

Post by harimau777 »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #13
harimau777 wrote: post #10

How does a research ban even work? It seems to me that at some point someone is going to research it; at which point everyone is left flat footed by having not researched it.

We don’t research what happens when a child falls out of a plane and nobody feels like we’re falling behind for it.

I think that the difference may be that there's relatively little benefit or desire to researching children falling out of planes and we have fairly easy ways to study the question indirectly (accelerometers, cadaver studies, animal studies, etc.).

Also, there are numerous examples throughout history of people performing evil human studies; so while people may not have studied children falling from planes, people have studied equivalent things.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#64

Post by throwawaymaths »

ninininino wrote: post #61
throwawaymaths wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no. antibodies will work just fine on a d-protein and one of their mechanisms of killing is to generate ozone, which is an achiral molecule. there is currently ~no risk because generating mirror life is such a monumental task. we dont have a full biological bootstrap sequence currently. even syn1.0 which was a synthetic genome transplant and rebooting operation, required a living host cell to transplant the DNA into,…

I don't think anyone is worried about mirror proteins by themselves, they are worried about someone assembling a self-replicating/self-propagating mirror life, no? In which case, the fear is that you can't just run around ozone-ing every little colony of chiral-mirror version of cyanobacteria under every rock in remote Siberia or wherever.

1. > Should work be started on developing mirror immune system cells, just in case?

2. by way of direct response to your question. mirror nutrients (like scavenged AAs, even for autotrophs) are liable to be very scarce so they'll have one hell of a disadvantage makimg it on this world.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#65

Post by gus_massa »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #9

Sounds like the warnings about GMO. In the mean time, they tried using mRNA vaccines that did mimic our own mRNA, but they caused immune reaction. Substituting a different nucleoside and made the vaccine more stable. The way pseudouridine is used in mRNA vaccines isn't found in nature, ergo people who have been vaccinated are already carrying around bit bit of a form of life never seen before on the planet.

tRNA has a lot of weird nucleotices. I expect no problem with another one, but I'm not a biologist.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA

> A large number of the individual nucleotides in a tRNA molecule may be chemically modified, often by methylation or deamidation. These unusual bases sometimes affect the tRNA's interaction with ribosomes and sometimes occur in the anticodon to alter base-pairing properties.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#66

Post by yawpitch »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #26
yawpitch wrote: post #20

Did Star Trek not already warn us about this one?

There's this meme about how sci-fi cautionary tales fly over people's heads, > At long last, we have finally created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel "Don't Create the Torment Nexus".

Don’t forget its thrilling sequel, “Don’t Create the Torment Nexus, Again”.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#67

Post by gwbas1c »

ninininino wrote: post #60
gwbas1c wrote: post #52

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.)

I don't quite understand the meaning of your comment, it reads to me like "one time people worried about something but their worries were unfounded" with the subtext/implication that "therefore we don't need to worry" - about this? Or maybe need to worry in general? Or is it just to feel a bit more optimism that not every doomsday fear ends up coming to fruition?

> Or is it just to feel a bit more optimism that not every doomsday fear ends up coming to fruition?

Exactly.

I suspect mirror-image molecule life hasn't evolved because it wouldn't be fit enough to be self-sustaining.

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#69

Post by selimthegrim »

ben_w wrote: post #45
yawpitch wrote: post #20

Did Star Trek not already warn us about this one?

Not that I recall — closest I can think of would either be TOS evil twin made from antimatter, the mirror universe in general, or Nelix' coffee. But I have seen it as a short story about how the world ends, some synthetic bacteria that was meant to be reversed chirality for safety, but eventually it went wild and could eat everything without itself being eaten by anything.

If this was ‘Starfish’ it was longer than a short story

Re: Mirror bacteria research poses significant risks, scientists warn

#70

Post by exe34 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #29
exe34 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but would a ban really stop somebody from trying?

If you can't get funding for your research, or publish under your real name if you do, it's certainly going curtail research at least. It could still happen if some nations refuse to endorse the ban, but there will at least be less of it, which means less risk.

That is to say, our enemies will master it first and we will be caught with our pants down.
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