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Hey babe, wake up. A new human-created, extinction-level event just dropped.
We just need to make mirror people that live in the mirror microbe side of the world
Yeah, we need more conflict. We'll create the ultimate "them" for us to "us" against. Contact with them is literally lethal! Can't get more conflict than that... yet.
Meh, we get a new one of those every year now. They'll have to try harder to impress me.
Fuck, again?
Oh for fuck's sake, we already know that mirror molecules can have disastrously unexpected side-effects on people, so why on Earth would we make an entire mirror organism that's has the potential to do the same but way, way worse!
I know I just responded, but I read the article, and the drug page, and discovered the thing we're talking about. Racemic organic molecules are not the same thing here.
These are specifically proteins used for cellular life. These are significantly more complex, as there are no natural bindings between the two. To note this from Wikipedia:
Examples include thalidomide, ibuprofen, cetirizine and salbutamol. A well known drug that has different effects depending on its ratio of enantiomers is amphetamine. Adderall is an unequal mixture of both amphetamine enantiomers. A single Adderall dose combines the neutral sulfate salts of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, with the dextro isomer of amphetamine saccharate and D/L-amphetamine aspartate monohydrate. The original Benzedrine was a racemic mixture, and isolated dextroamphetamine was later introduced to the market as Dexedrine. The prescription analgesic tramadol is also a racemate.
We know that those drugs aren't great in pregnancy, but Adderall specifically does not cause birth defects. Again, these molecules are significantly less complex than any protein they would talk about here.
I don't see any mention in there of Thalidomide being a mirror molecule, do you have a source for that?
Fair. I had thought that article with the scandel would mention it, but apparently doesn't. Only the main article does.
It has two possible configurations:
The Right handed configuration had the desired effects and isn't harmful.
The Left handed mirror caused birth defects.
Oh and the best part is, if you try to make a pure mixture of the right handed version, it can convert to the left handed one in the body!
why the fuck would it be mentioned. thalidomide is synthetic, article is about wrong enantiomer of natural compounds working in a living organism that has unnatural chirality. that teratogenic effect of thalidomide was figured out and is now used in anticancer treatments. it's a tool, and if you use it right it can be useful. that thing in article is highly speculative as of now and making any component would be hideously expensive anyway
Correct. It's also a much simpler organic molecule than any of the proteins they are talking about creating.
Man, you ain't gotta be rude.
I meant the article I linked to the Thalidomide scandal. I was surprised that chirality wasn't mentioned even once in the wiki article about it causing birth defects, considering it's chirality was a key factor in that scandal.
I know it wouldn't be in the OP article because they're only minorly related instances, but my point was tjat we already know what mirroring even a simple compound can do to living things, nevermind complex proteins and entire organisms.
And IMO, using arguably the single most widely known instance of mirror chemicals gone wrong to make that point is perfectly valid.
Yes, but like any tool, if there's no safeguards, it will could do unimaginable damage (which is also why I used Thalidomide as an example, as it inspired literally tonnes of safeguards post-scandel). Like GMOs can be dangerous as is, but at least in most instances it's only the living organism itself that's dangerous. With mirroring, any part of that organism could be dangerous to normal lifeforms, so even sterilised mirror waste could be dangerous
This sounds horrifying, but if they do make them I hope they all have little goaties.
A 299-page report in Science advocates banning such research until safety can be ensured and calls for global debate on its ethical and ecological implications
Which will not be read or followed!
Weeeeee! Maybe i die of superflu instead of hunger or jackboot
I don't think viruses are the major concern here, viruses need to be compatible with our cells and DNA or RNA. It's bacteria and other simplistic life forms that could infect our body and be largely invisible to our immune system.
Prions on steroids.
A biological hate machine
Yeah, this should probably be approached from the angle of "someone might do this, so we should do research to be prepared".
Research ways to improve containment to reduce the chance of an accidental containment breach.
And research ways to quickly determine the weaknesses of such synthetic lifeforms if a breach happens anyways. Also to be prepared in case someone deliberately weaponizes it.
By the way, this kind of thing is why IMO if we ever do find extra terrestrial life, attempting to make any kind of physical contact or even land on the planet might end up dooming both our own species (and maybe all current complex life on Earth) as well as any complex life on that other planet. They could have basic forms of life that are entirely different from our own and completely invisible to our immune systems.
Though it would probably also have cool results in a few hundred million years, after microbial life has evolved defenses and perhaps some hybridizations.
If the world wants it banned, you can be sure China and Russia are working on it in secret labs, maybe USA too anyway.
Like when the UN banned buying uranium from apartheid south Africa mines but everyone kept buying anyway
What if we kissed with molecules of opposite chirality?
Yeah, knowing how fucky simple protein molecules can get when you flip the chirality (prions, which are essentially the root cause of Alzheimer’s and CJD and a few other neurodegenerative conditions), making whole-ass microbes on that principle without understanding what that could even mean sounds like a WILDLY insane idea.
Not to nit but we absolutely do not know the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Not that prions are good or anything.
Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to imply that’s all that is going on with Alzheimer’s, but I was under the impression that prion formation/presence in neurological tissue was extremely highly correlated with the condition, though the precise mechanism of their effects aren’t yet well understood. Then again, I haven’t seriously looked into that stuff since my grandfather passed from it a while ago.
Sorry about your grandfather. There's probably more than one mechanism for alzeimers (not an expert), but amaloyid plaque formation, which is definitely A way to develop alzheimer's, is indeed a prion like event. I'm not sure if "prion" has some hyper-precise definition but the ideas similar: you get one amalyoid protein that misfolds, and acts as a nucleation site misfolding and agglomerating others.
As always, some people see Jurassic Park as inspiration and wonder why nobody gave Hammond a chance.
The rest of us know that Dr. Malcolm was right from the start.
To be fair, whoever designed that park was a moron.
That’s what you get when you treat your IT like crap and only hire one person.
Newman didn't built the park though. If you require power for the park to not fall apart immediately, you've already lost.
Remember that whole movie happens in one night. T rexes breaking confinement the moment the fence isn't electrified means some engineer fucked up big time.
Ok. THANK YOU. I also have to say my biggest issue with the newer one (I forget which) is when the parks going to hell, and the park director just decides to go off into the jungle. Like outside of just design of the park, there is NO way you don't have rigid protocols in-place. Like you read about half the crap Disney does/can do at their parks... there's no way the head of the park just goes "oh you guys got this, I'll be back at some point, just do your best".
Like if ONLY for the reason it would be a known PR disaster for something that in universe already had PR disasters... that shit would have been drilled in since day -1000. It's my biggest issue with the writing because it's not even sci-fi.
/end rant.
Prions aren't a chirality issue, they're a folding issue
Prions are comprised of right-handed amino acids. I don't think it's the same thing to flip the chirality of a molecule as to flip the chirality of its subcomponents. DNA is usually right-handed, but there are left-handed forms created naturally. They don't suddenly annihilate their counterparts in antimatter-like collisions.
There are natural pharmaceuticals that consist of both chiralities, and obviously plenty of synthetic ones.
It's really not that simple. If we want to think about it longer, fine by me. But what is the real threat level?
Edit: As others have pointed out, prions also aren't an example of a different chirality of the native protein. The issue with prions is they can convert the native protein to their form, which "reproduces" themselves to make the disease progress. Mirrored organisms will propagate the chirality of their components, but their components don't inherently convert their enantiomers once that organism is dead.
Why we need a moon base with an unconnected section where everything is done by robots
Yea, I'd definitely trust us with that... we could probably get one of our highly trust worthy billionaires to run it.
Maybe we could equip this moon base equipped with civilization ending microbes with a giant laser just in case sending the bio weapon back to earth seems too expensive to the board members?
Regardless of whether such an organism is a danger, there's no way we can even come close to creating an entire organism with an opposite chirality in just a decade. That would require somehow synthesizing every chiral component of the organism (proteins, enzymes, DNA, etc) from scratch which is completely impossible with current or near future technology.
I've been out of synthetic bio for damn near two decades now, and an undergrad when was I even in it, but I'm not so sure. PCR didn't come around until 85. I had professors that used to do every cycle manually. Human genome project wrapped in 03(?). You can order custom oligos for like $0.13USD a base pair mail order now. You type it in on a webform, a machine creates a custom molecule for you, and if you want to pay a little extra you can have it over-night. I suppose it depends what you call "near future", and synthetic biology has always had moving goal posts when it came to "functional liposome" and "synthetic life", but I don't know... shit can move fast sometimes.
Should we treat this any differently than the way we treat research with dangerous pathogens?
Because apparently the only way to get rid of it is extreme incineration.
This isn't viral or bacterial, where just a little bit of heat, UV or decay will kill it.
When someone dies of prion disease, they need to incinerate everything. Clothes/Body/Beds, the whole thing.
These are nightmare fuel.
UV or heat, or ethylene oxide and a number of other things still would kill wrong chirality bacteria, these are not prions, where are you people are getting this from