Scientists Want This Banned | STEM Loft

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's the scariest biology concept of them all? While there is some scary science out there, one that's getting the attention of biologists right now is called mirror life. Although even the possibility of creating it is still a long way off, scientists are talking about setting guardrails on exploring this area of research now because of the major impact it could have for life on Earth. Just because we can research something doesn't mean we should. Where one of the elevator buttons is a skull and crossbones, and I really wanna press it. You likely prefer writing notes, scrolling social media, and hitting a baseball either with your right or left hand. 99% of us are either right or left-handed, making it a lot easier to do things with one side of our bodies. And the other side, well, let's just say it doesn't work quite as well. But humans aren't the only ones with a preference like this. Many other things in our universe, like DNA and proteins, also have a handedness. Now, what if we could change that handedness? This concept is called mirror life. The handedness of the building blocks of life is known as chirality. When a chiral object is laid on top of its mirror image, no matter how it's rotated, it won't perfectly line up. Think again of your hands. They're mirror images of each other. However, no matter how I rotate them, they can't be perfectly superimposed on top of each other. You may have experienced this when trying to put your left hand's glove on your right hand or your right hand's on your left. I wouldn't say this is my most stylish look. DNA is naturally right-handed, meaning its classic DNA double helix shape twists to the right. On the other hand, proteins are left-handed. Some molecules, like tartrate, which can be found in wine or is sometimes added to food, have left or right-handed forms. Each molecule's chirality makes a big impact on how it functions. Louis Pasteur is most famous for his creation of pasteurization, a process that kills harmful pathogens in things like milk, but he's also considered the father of molecular chirality. He discovered chirality when he separated left- and right-handed tartrate crystal shapes from each other back in 1847. But what would happen if we could change the chirality of left- or right-handed microbes and flip them around into something else entirely? To imagine how DNA would change in mirror form, take your finger and point straight forward in front of you. Move your finger forward while twisting it clockwise. You've just traced the shape of DNA. Now, put your finger in front of you, move it forward, and twist it counterclockwise. You've just created the shape of a mirrored DNA molecule. Mirrored DNA like this has been created in labs, but a living cell or organism is a piece that's far away. This type of intensive editing of an organism is an example of synthetic cell biology, the act of redesigning an organism to produce something specific or give it a new ability. Think of it as giving a tiny creature tiny superpowers. For example, thanks to synthetic biology, microorganisms like bacteria have been repurposed to clean pollutants from air, water, and soil, converting toxic elements into less harmful elements. Maybe they can engineer some bacteria to help me clean my dishes too. Scientists usually do this by stitching together long stretches of DNA and inserting them into an organism's genome, aka their full set of DNA instructions. But creating mirror microbes would be taking things to another level, maybe even a dangerous level, that can destroy environments and spread disease. Chirality serves as a way molecules recognize and talk to each other, meaning changing the shape to its mirror version is similar to giving it an invisibility cloak. Other molecules don't know how to interact with it. This can be an advantage or it can be a big problem. Mirror image molecules are great at dodging substances in our bodies that typically break down proteins and nucleic acids within minutes. This allows mirror drugs to circulate longer in the bloodstream, improving the efficiency of treatment. This is one of the big reasons people originally thought mirror life could be a great new medical tool. However, imagine that instead of treating a disease, that mirror molecule did something bad to your body. You'd want your immune system to recognize and get rid of it. If it doesn't, your body's primary line of defense is useless and you have no way to get better. Similarly, organisms in nature aren't built to recognize mirrored bacteria. The mirrored versions basically become invisible to things that would stop their growth and spread. And even if they did happen to get consumed, many of their typical predators couldn't break them down into useful nutrients, meaning they have no reason to consume them at all. A fast-reproducing organism with no natural predators. Hmm, sounds like the start of a sci-fi horror movie to me. Introducing a bunch of new organisms to an environment could also take away tons of the resources existing organisms already consume, leaving nothing behind for the plants or creatures that rely on them today. This could wipe out ecosystems, species, and damage our planet. A mirror microbe has the potential to spread like wildfire, causing a pandemic or substantial harm to the environment. Maybe the scariest thing is we just don't know what would happen. We're just making hypotheses based on what we do know, but the fact that wiping out animals and humans alike is a possibility isn't a great starting point. So if there's all that risk, why would anyone consider creating mirror life in the first place? Well, now that the risks have been fully revealed, scientists are trying to stop this from ever happening. Just because something's scientifically possible doesn't mean it should be investigated. In a landmark publication, 38 scientists from nine countries expressed they were deeply concerned about work on developing mirror life. The authors recommend that unless compelling new evidence emerged that mirror life would not pose big dangers, research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria should not be permitted or funded. Scientific journals refusing to publish work, research communities creating safeguards, and a lack of funding could make sure mirror life isn't developed. It would basically make working on mirror life research taboo and shunned in the science community. That could be enough to stop work on it because at this point, it would take a huge cost to do this research. Scientists estimate that it would take about one to three decades and an investment of about half a billion dollars in order to make mirror microbes a reality. This wouldn't be the first time scientists have collectively set rules about their own work, worrying about its potential. In 1975, DNA researchers, lawyers, and journalists came together at a conference to develop biotechnology guidelines that were woven into government regulations and safeguards still in place 50 years later. They asked the big questions of could we and should we? So based on what we know right now, hopefully mirror life is never created. I'm not looking for a biological apocalypse in my lifetime, but even without mirror life being developed, much safer synthetic biology creations will continue to make a positive impact in our lives. Hey, it's Miranda Cosgrove, your favorite host of Mission Unstoppable. I'm the only host. 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