World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.
The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.
Many molecules for life can exist in two distinct forms, each the mirror image of the other. The DNA of all living organisms is made from “right-handed” nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from “left-handed” amino acids. Why nature works this way is unclear: life could have chosen left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins instead.
The fresh concerns over the technology are revealed in a 299-page report and a commentary in the journal Science. While enthusiastic about research on mirror molecules, the report sees substantial risks in mirror microbes and calls for a global debate on the work.
This seems like something that really is a minimal risk. Pathogens are pathogens because they are able to make use of our bodies as raw materials to reproduce. Unless they are able to make use of both enantiomers in their biology, there’s little benefit to dedicating resources to colonizing us.
Probably a bigger concern would be outcompeting and displacing organisms lower on the food chain.
If mirrored microbes require mirrored antibodies to be killed that is something no living thing on earth has the ability to create.
Absolutely. Conversely, if mirrored microbes aren’t able to make use of building materials in hosts that are mirrors to them, pathogenicity makes little biological sense (microbes don’t make us sick out of spite). Now, if they could, that would be a problem. Even if not, they could fatally disrupt the gut microbiome.
The scope of what I suspect to be the greater danger, I’ve, perhaps understated. Suppose mirror bacteria “escape” and are able to thrive in the surrounding environment. As you note, known life has not evolved to be able to defend against it. This introduces the possibility of the artificial bacteria displacing the natural ones. Since the biosphere involves more complex organisms feeding on the smaller ones, it is plausible that the entire food web could be disrupted, leading to extinction of extant complex life, unless adaptation occurs quick enough.
I don’t think that’s how it works. This would just double the amount of microbes that can possibly exist in the world. Your immune system would still be good, but it would double the number of fronts in the proverbial war.
What?
Fire, alcohol, bleach, etc. Would all still disinfect.
Immune systems would still work. They detect anything “foreign”. Immune system reacts to a metal splinter just like it would for wood or a parasite.
Do you have credentials in this field, or are you just kind of guessing? Because, no offense, but I’m skeptical of random people on internet forums contradicting literal scientists.
Good point, though I find the part of the commentary relevant:
That is basically my suspicion, from my knowledge at this time. Pathogenicity as a danger seems questionable based upon how incompatible known life is with the opposite enantiomers of its basic building blocks (though, if artificial “mirror” bacteria were able to develop enzymes to change the chirality of the proteins, etc, it would probably be bad).
Going on that energy-intensive chemistry being tricky to accomplish, it is far more likely that generalists could displace extant microorganisms that may be unable to use their evolved defenses effectively. This could result in cascading food web disruptions until either extant life adapts, or complex organisms go extinct through starvation.
I have a question with my very limited knowledge of biology:
Currently, pathogens “use” certain resources in a host, and then the host’s immune system creates antibodies that eventually kill the pathogens (or the pathogen kills the host).
The arguments are: mirror pathogens would require mirror antibodies, which is not possible for natural bodies to produce. However, this is not really a problem because our physical selves as resources would be incompatible with the needs of a mirror pathogen.
My question is: mirror or otherwise, could a pathogen “hijack” something other than usual as a resource?
Let’s say, I don’t know, Prime Pathogen A normally uses Prime Protein A, Mirror Pathogen A would require Mirror Pathogen A. Is it possible for a host to have a Prime Protein B that meets Mirror Pathogen A’s requirement–perhaps not perfectly, but “good enough” to sustain Mirror Pathogen A?
This is a pretty good understanding. However, antibodies are only one tool in the immune systems of complex animals. There are also a number of specialized immune cells that perform jobs like patrolling the body to try to detect foreign cells and objects to “label” as invaders, or phagocytes that try to envelope and digest foreign cells and objects. Additionally, there are strategies like making the body a less hospitable environment by increasing the temperature (fever). Antimicrobial chemical production is also very common in single-celled organisms but identified in fewer complex animals.
Possible but, when looking specifically at the hypothetical “mirror” biology, less likely and probably would require specialized adaptations. The main problem that they would need to overcome, which is rather uncommon in known life is the mirrored shape of important biological molecules. Specifically, amino acids and sugars.
Both of these types molecules have a property known as “chirality”, where the atoms in the molecule can be oriented in two ways, while still all being bonded to the same neighbors. These are known as enantiomers and designated with the prefixes “levo” (“l-”), meaning left, and “dextro” (“d-”), meaning right. Biology as we know it is very specialized to make use of l-amino acids and d-sugars. There are some exceptions but they tend to be rather specialized and less energetically favorable.
Some organisms can break down d-amino acids and use their atoms as nitrogen sources to build new l-amino acids. It is much, much more common, however, to use l-amino acids from either the host cells or their proteins. This takes the pathogen far less energy to accomplish as well as not requiring evolving specialized enzymes that most organisms don’t have.
So, in the case of the mirror pathogen, it would have to have the ability and dedicate the energy to breakdown l-amino acids to build its d-amino acids. This would, indeed, likely result in slower growth rate. That, in itself, has a lot of potential to limit pathogenicity as high growth rate is generally required to be problematic. Phagocytes will still try to envelope and remove foreign objects that they don’t “think” are alive, so, the mirror pathogen could face risk of excretion if it is not able to reproduce quickly enough to maintain a population.
So, overall, yes, hypothetically possible and even plausible (if the mirror organisms are able to metabolize d-sugars and l-amino acids) but less likely. Pathogenicity requires the ability to grow a population fast enough or otherwise evade the immune system which is also able act on “invaders” that it does not recognize as biological (maybe being really good at building a bioplaque that makes it difficult to move or use of toxins). Simply having mirrored chemistry alone is probably insufficient to evade the immune system enough to be pathogenic.
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to answer my question and helping me understand this (or at least understand it better). The world is fascinating!
You’re very welcome! The world is absolutely incredible and there is so much to learn about everything. I love it :D
And your background in biology is…?
Undergrad in biochemistry with a year research internship. Also, a long, AuADHD-fueled interest with chemistry, industrial microbiology, and reading research papers. Yourself?
Obviously this individual wouldn’t be asking unless they had a PhD in molecular nutology
Ok, on one side we have undergrad and on other international group of Nobel laureates and other experts. Who is probably right…
Nobel Laureates have never made ridiculous statements that didn’t mesh well with scientific evidence. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, credited with discovering PCR would never be quoted as refuting the evidence of HIV as causative in AIDS, cited in a journal article questioning the evidence, and then the journal article retracted due to it being inaccurately labeled as “Hypothesis and Theory” instead of opinion, factually inaccurate, and dangerous - oh. Oh no:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830318/
Next thing, you’ll tell me that scientists are humans that are fallible and some of them sometimes engage in ethically-questionable activities and sensationalism for profit.
There exists cases where scientists are wrong therefore my arrogance is correct. Got it :/
I’m not sure how I have come off as arrogant. But, I’m fallible just like every other human, including Nobel Laureates. I’m curious to see whether they are actually citing plausible pathogenicity or food web disruption, or if it is just sensationalism from the authors or the science communicator.
https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/appeal-to-authority-fallacy/
FYI: Just because someone is a Nobel Laureate does not mean they are correct.
i do not disagree, but probability of who is right is not on the side of random lemmy poster in this case.
Let’s refresh your memory on what the original poster you criticized said since you think this is about who is right:
This is someone forming an opinion based on what they know so far. They are clearly a good scientist because they are not making any factual claims here. They are, in fact, doing what any good scientist does and bringing up issues they see with the claims of other scientists.
They are not even saying it wouldn’t be an overall problem and I would not be at all surprised if they modify their opinion, which was neither a claim nor a prediction, if they read the 299-page report, but you seem to want a formal rebuttal. A formal rebuttal and a peer review process do not require someone to have a degree and people without degrees have had papers published in scientific journals.
And if they came up with a formal rebuttal and allowed it to be peer-reviewed, would you even read it?
Yup. Planning to crack that open this weekend :).
Fair enough then! I know I wouldn’t have the knowledge to understand any of it.
Looking at you, kid.
We all know who calls others kids…
Humphrey Bogart?
You read what they wrote and became sceptical of their credentials? I mean, it’s healthy to be cautiously sceptical of anything you read/hear to an extent. But to immediately and without any further discussion, call them out in a patronising and condescending way is wild.
It makes me want to know if you have a background in biology. Since you so readily dispute someone else’s. Someone who, at least on the surface, seems to know what they are talking about.
In fact, why do you give so much credit to the legitimacy of the article and its writer, there might be a “38 strong group” of nobel laureates and experts warning about this, but the writer of the article adds the spin. The writer decides how to portray the warnings and their urgency. They might be overselling this. And since there is little to no citation in the article, i am more inclined to question the articles’ legitimacy before i query this poster…
Why do you give so much credit to the legitimacy of the random poster on internet?
I dont think i have given them any credit. I would argue i simply didn’t dispute them out of hand. Especially as you did without backing myself up with evidence of my own credentials.
I also thought i expressed that we should all be sceptical of anything we read on the internet. My issue was how you weighted your sceptisism. You seem to have automatically given all credibility to a reporter, under the assumption that they held no bias that affected the story they wrote.
For all you know, the random poster on the internet may be a legitimate scientist and expert who disagrees with them. Their opinion may be just as valid as the opinion in the report.
As a recent example, google released a quantum computer chip, and lemmy immediately ripped apart the reports and media buzz around what it was actually capable of. I believe that this is a great example of healthy sceptisism.
I believe that what you did is an example of unhealthy or misplaced sceptisism.
Granted, if it turned out that this random poster was absolutely unqualified to make the assertions that they did then absolutely you would be in the right.
I just dont think its helpful to dispute them out of hand with nothing to back you up.
This is actually a fair and good question to ask. Being too credulous of things read on the Internet has shown rather problematic in recent years. Taking everything written in academic journals, especially opinion pieces not based upon peer-reviewed evidence, without skepticism has shown to be problematic since before the Internet, however.
I’m kind of surprised by the reaction you’re getting here as I had the same exact question (you can see that I posted it before seeing yours).
Knowing that the person has some background in biology helps, but that was not clear in the initial comment. And even still, I lean toward believing the actual professionals who have studied this exact thing for years over some random person on an internet forum.
In fairness, i completely agree that the experts mentioned in the article are more than likely a reliable source of information here and their opinion is almost certainly the one i would side with, not being a biologist by any stretch of the imagination myself.
However, that’s not really my point. My point is that this person immediately, condescendingly and patronisingly disputed the claim of aomeone who at the very least sounded like they knew what they were talking about, without showing any evidence that they themselves are a reputable source of doubt and without knowing anything about the person they were disputing.
I dont think that’s a healthy way to discuss things.
In all fairness, I also agree with them likely being a solid source of information. There’s been a huge trend of leveraging academic credentials to boost sensationalism in recent years, so, until I read their reasoning, I am skeptical, specifically of whether or not it is blown out of proportion by the authors or the science communicator.
I wouldn’t expect that sentence from someone without a background in biology for many, many reasons.
After browsing facebook for one hour I also got to the conclusion that all those people publishing in Science are lying. /s