science

In recent decades, chemists have discovered how to make mirror proteins. Researchers have welded together right-handed amino acids to create mirror versions of natural proteins made by our own bodies.

Mirror proteins behave much like their natural counterparts, with one important difference: They take much longer to break down. That’s because the natural enzymes that normally degrade proteins have shapes that are adapted for attacking left-handed proteins.

They cannot grip mirror proteins and cut them into fragments. Their failure is akin to what happens if you try to twist open a lid from a jar by turning it counterclockwise, only to discover that the threads on the jar twist in the opposite direction.

Chemists are now trying to exploit mirror proteins, hoping they can be used to create long-acting drugs for diseases ranging from H.I.V. to Alzheimer’s.

Could Wreak Havoc

yeah... so what are we giving it before one of these things escapes containment, 5 years? less?

Hyperbole, any mirror organisms we cook up will be simple and inefficient since they won't be able to make easy use of the abundance of material that is the wrong chirality for their biochemistry. If they escaped they'd starve to death because all the normal life would be scavenging all the food sources much more effectively.

Mirror proteins behave much like their natural counterparts, with one important difference: They take much longer to break down. That’s because the natural enzymes that normally degrade proteins have shapes that are adapted for attacking left-handed proteins. They cannot grip mirror proteins and cut them into fragments.

The virtual non-existence of enzymes that can break down right-handed proteins is almost assuredly because their use is vanishingly rare in life on Earth right now. If mirror life did escape the lab and find some way to thrive, normal life would suffer until some normal bacteria happened to mutate and create enzymes that could break it down.

I expect it to be like the Carboniferous period. Trees evolved, and nothing was around that could break down lignin, so they thrived for millions of years and caused devastation to ecosystems of the time. But dead trees represented a lot of untapped raw materials, so eventually other life evolved to break them down.

I would expect the same with mirror life. All else being equal, a few million years of devastation until life evolved ways to fight back. Or humans could dramatically speed that up by genetically engineering normal life (bacteria) with the tools to break down mirror proteins and thus attack mirror cells. It would still be devastating and would completely reshape life on the planet, but it may let humanity squeak through and continue existing.

Im really starting to wonder which great filter is going to wipe us all out at this rate. Leaning towards a when, not an if.

How many times do we have to tell them to stop trying to clone Yggdrasil. Is pando not enough?!

Sooooo... Mirror cells can't be latched onto by normal cells. Why would mirror cells be able to latch onto normal cells? This seems like fear mongering because, logically speaking, if A can't attach to B, then B can't attach to A. I suppose you could program mirror cells to attack normal cells via indirect means (creating toxins that kill normal cells), but it seems like they'd struggle to fulfill their purpose because the article makes it sound like their "diet" is also mirrored.

I would think that evolution already tried this and was a complete failure? If no life on Earth uses such mirrored cells? Can anyone explain to my dumb ass?

Oh no, not the strawberry catastrophe from The Mote in God's Eye.

That's fear on the basis of "it's different", nothing more. If it's justified; i don't think so.

Wait how would the mirror cells consume anything that normals cells do?

Wouldn't they be entirely dependant on mirrored organic molecules? Which we dont have anyway?

Paywalled article. :(