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And here I thought my late 2024 anxiety level was maxed out already.
It gets worse. They are also working on mirror physics, where they launch orbiting observatories made of antimatter. What could possibly go wrong.
Antimatter does not replicate the way microbes do to be fair. It's dangerous to handle in large enough amounts obviously, be we don't have the energy to produce enough to create a serious danger nor the technology to store that amount at once.
Ya the total amount of antimatter ever produced is something insaly small like 10 nanograms
Activate the omega-13... 48 times.
I love the movie Galaxy Quest.
It’s a ROCK! IT DOESN'T HAVE ANY VULNERABLE SPOTS!
Anyone feeling freaked out by this doesn't have anything to worry about. There's nothing you and I can do to stop the research. Go on and enjoy your life.
The thing about that is if all this is for is research then I could have some hope that they'd actually stop.
If someone thinks there's profit to be made and that's what is driving the research then it's never going to stop unless they go bankrupt or it proves to be worthless... What happens to the world at large doesn't matter one bit to people chasing profit :(
Right. That's what i said.
So just enjoy what you have. Smile, chin up, tell your family and friends you love them. Don't stress over something you can't control.
Not with that attitude.
Good point.
Don't enjoy your life. Fuck it.
Ahh yes, man made horrors beyond our comprehension
Proteins and DNA and their mirrored counterparts behave like the Tetris L and ⅃ blocks, basically the same but you cannot rotate them to fit in a hole meant for the other. Fitting in holes is, somewhat literally, how most processes of life work on the sub-cellular level.
Processes like the immune system. And if an experimental microbe from mirrored DNA doesn't fit in the holes your immune system uses to identify things, because all the proteins curve the wrong way, there's no telling how it behaves, even if the unmirrored version is one of the most studied organisms. And it's not just your immune system, it's every living things' one. And 1 microbe alone is a potential pandemic.
I am no expert, but I hope the horror is comprehensible now. If not, I imagine minuteEarth's video on mirrored molecules is basically the same reasoning here, with the caveat that mirrored DNA tends to make more of itself.
The incomprehensible part was that we don’t know how bad things can get if this stuff got out into the wild. I got the chiral parts lol thanks for the further explanation
I get the fear but what about those of us that want a Symbiote-suit?
Sure. Why not. Add it to the pile.
Evil microbes with little goatees..
This was immediately my thought haha
Mirror bacteria are just like the normal bacteria around us every day, except if you look at them under a microscope they all have evil looking goatees.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer
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.
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:
Although we were initially skeptical that mirror bacteria could pose major risks, we have become deeply concerned. We were uncertain about the feasibility of synthesizing mirror bacteria but have concluded that technological progress will likely make this possible. We were uncertain about the consequences of mirror bacterial infection in humans and animals, but a close examination of existing studies led us to conclude that infections could be severe. Unlike previous discussions of mirror life, we also realized that generalist heterotroph mirror bacteria might find a range of nutrients in animal hosts and the environment and thus would not be intrinsically biocontained
Unlike previous discussions of mirror life, we also realized that generalist heterotroph mirror bacteria might find a range of nutrients in animal hosts and the environment and thus would not be intrinsically biocontained
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.
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
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....
Unless they are able to make use of both enantiomers in their biology
I wouldn't expect that sentence from someone without a background in biology for many, many reasons.
I am NOT a religious man but I'm a strong believer that we are so eager to play God we are forgetting to ask the important questions around if we should.
Personally speaking I think we need to pause on things like this, or AI as another example. We have proven repeatedly we lack the maturity as a species for what we are learning.
That said, you can't put everything back in Pandora's box so for everyone reading this sharing my concern, YOLO and cover your head and wait for the worst.
Edit - the biggest threat to humanity is our unyielding curiosity.
It's like that old saying ... Just because we can doesn't mean we should.
AI is one of those things that's stupidly overblown. The true downsides to AI are it's uses in spreading misinformation and it's enormous environmental impact. When companies are buying nuclear plants for enough electricity, the whole thing has gone off the rails. There are other downsides but those two are the largeat to me. In short though, we've nothing like true AI anyways so playing god is a stretch.
Edit: tbf I do understand your point and find it valid.
It's cool, America has RFK Jr. So...
...it's not cool, actually
Oh, great... Certainly no laboratory in some Les amicable country will continue this research to try to take a stab at fame....
Did they create some organism yet?
I believe creating life from non living parts available in nature has a great importance in proving that life could definitely have been originated like that. This would have several consequences to how we view the world.
As for the risks, they could agree on destroying all the created life after recording and documenting the results
Would prions fall under this category?
no
the point of prions is that there's a naturally occurring protein in metastable state, and when contacted by a protein in more stable state it can transition to that more stable state. this way it's infective without being alive. there's nothing like this in nature, let alone commonly occurring