
Synthesis of mirror-chiral version of organism – incompatible with our pathogens - jarekd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_life_concept
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jarekd
Synthetic biology synthesizes viruses till 2002, bacteria in 2010, ribosome in
2013. Inevitably approaching the possibility of synthesizing a cell from
single molecules, when it could use mirror-image molecules instead
(enantiomers), getting mirror-chiral version of an organism, which among
others would feed with L-sugars instead of our D-sugars ... and would be
incompatible with our pathogens.

Some potential applications:

\- mass production in e.g. chiral E. Coli of enantiomers of our proteins,
opening new world of possibilities e.g. for drugs,

\- designing and creating bottom-up really sterile ecosystems, what might be
essential e.g. for bringing life to harsh environments like Mars – pathogens
greatly decrease efficiency of ecosystems and it seems impossible to really
get rid of them in standard way,

\- finally to create chiral humans – immune to nearly all diseases.

As it seems synthesizing some mirror-chiral organism is a matter of time, for
example just because we can, let us try to prepare: discuss, understand its
possibilities, consequences ... and dangers.

------
pizza
Imagine if there had been an even mix of L- and D-organisms since the start of
life, wow

~~~
jarekd
Here are hypotheses why we have only one of them:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homochirality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homochirality)

Personally, my answer is that the mix of both is statistically unstable
(repelling): the more one type of life, the more material the next generation
of this type of life has - leading to total domination of initially randomly
chosen one of them (spontaneous symmetry breaking).

However, we are currently closing to being technologically able to
artificially synthesize the second (mirror) type of life - this is a huge
topic we should well understand before somebody eventually will just do it ...

