by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
Renowned scientists are sounding the alarm: Artificial “Mirror Life,” constructed in mirror image to natural models, poses an “unprecedented threat” to all life. How justified is this shrill warning about the latest biotech madness? Does it distract from an acute, much greater danger?
“The threat we’re talking about here is unprecedented,” warns Prof. Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. He is one of a group of 38 renowned scientists – including Nobel laureates – who are urgently calling for an immediate halt to any further research into so-called mirror-life microbes. Synthetic bacteria, consisting of mirror images of naturally occurring molecular structures, could spread uncontrollably in the environment and overcome the immune defenses of natural organisms, exposing humans, animals, and plants to the risk of deadly infections. A “global catastrophe,” even “the end of the world,” is looming.
The concerned group of experts includes Dr. Craig Venter – the US scientist who pioneered the sequencing of the human genome in the 1990s – as well as Nobel laureates Prof. Greg Winter of the University of Cambridge and Prof. Jack Szostak of the University of Chicago.
What is so important to them?
Mirror-life microbes are synthetic microorganisms that mirror the biochemistry of known life forms. This concept is based on the phenomenon of chirality. Most molecules of life—especially amino acids and sugars—have this property: They exist in two mirror-image versions, similar to the left and right hand. Terrestrial amino acids are almost exclusively left-handed (L-form), while sugars in DNA and RNA are right-handed (D-form). This is surprising because, normally, both forms could arise in chemistry. But life uses only one side—a phenomenon called homochirality.
Mirror-life microbes would be organisms in which this chirality is reversed. They would use D-amino acids instead of L-amino acids and L-sugars instead of D-sugars. Their entire biochemistry would thus be like a mirror image of life as we know it.
Why alternative biology?
Biologists are fascinated by this concept for several reasons. On the one hand, such microbes represent a form of alternative biology that potentially functions completely differently from all known life. They would be enzyme-resistant: L-DNA is not degraded by normal enzymes. And they would be “recognition-protected”: Their mirror DNA is invisible to the immune system.
In astrobiology, “Mirror Life” raises the intriguing question of whether life in the universe could exist that is structured “the other way around.”
The idea also plays a role in biotechnology: Research is already underway to produce artificial mirror proteins or mirror DNA, for example, for drugs against a variety of chronic, difficult-to-treat, or even therapy-resistant diseases – or for highly stable nanomachines that recognize and destroy tumor cells, repair tissue and cells, purify the blood, “patrol” the body, perform tiny surgeries, fight infections, and transport drugs specifically to the intended location in the body.
To date, however, no one has brought true mirror-life microbes into the world – it remains a theoretical concept. However, researchers have already synthesized parts of this mirrored biochemistry in the laboratory, such as mirror DNA (L-DNA) and D-proteins.
One hundred percent “biosafe”? Unpredictable risks
Mirror bacteria appear to be a completely safe invention. They are considered biologically incompatible: They couldn’t infiltrate normal organisms, infect us, and utilize nutrients from them. Researchers reassure us that they live in a “different biochemical world.”
Horizontal gene transfer, which alters the genome, is also completely impossible. Mirror DNA cannot recombine with normal DNA.
On the other hand, Murphy’s Law applies: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In a 299-page report and a commentary in the journal Science, the 38 scientists outline their concerns about this technology.
1. Because mirror-life microbes consist of mirror-image molecules, the human immune system would be unable to recognize them. This would allow them to cause infections unnoticed that are difficult or even impossible to treat.
2. There are no natural predators. Bacteriophages or other microorganisms couldn’t attack mirror-life microbes because their enzymes and mechanisms are aligned with their natural molecular structure. This could lead to uncontrolled spread.
3. If such microbes were to enter the environment, they could establish themselves in new ecological niches and displace native species. This could potentially lead to a massive imbalance in ecosystems. Sangram Bagh, a synthetic biologist at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, points to a soil bacterium that evolved to survive the powerful disinfectants in NASA rooms by eating the very cleaning agents designed to eliminate them. “This shows that the power of evolution should not be underestimated. Similarly, mirror-life bacteria could adapt and thrive when they are released outdoors.”
4. Once escaped from the laboratory or intentionally released, mirror-life organisms could spread unchecked worldwide because they cannot be controlled by the immune system or natural enemies. This would make their spread nearly impossible to stop.
As an example of this risk, Deepa Agashe, an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, cites Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a highly infectious, invasive fungus. It causes chytridiomycosis, a disease that disrupts skin function in amphibians—vital for their respiration and hydration. It has “spread its way around the world”—to India and Australia as well as the Americas and Africa—and “led to the extinction of 90 amphibian species, with 500 more species declining sharply in recent decades.”
5. Because the structure of mirror-life bacteria is fundamentally different, common antibiotics could be ineffective. Developing specific antidotes would be time-consuming and could come too late to prevent a pandemic.
“Mirror bacteria escape from the lab”: This is how the artificial intelligence ChatGPT imagines a lab leak from “Mirror Life” when asked to create a comic about it.
Misuse would also be expected. Theoretically, someone could use mirror-life techniques to build molecular machines that harm normal organisms without being detected. One example would be mirrored nanomachines that penetrate or disrupt normal cell membranes. Mirror bacteria could act as perfect pathogens outside of natural immune recognition and resistance. Terrorists and aggressive regimes dream of such a bioweapon. Currently, this is still science fiction, but in 20 to 30 years, it could be quite conceivable.
Conclusion: Compared to conventional genetically modified microbes, mirror bacteria would be relatively safe if they remained in a controlled environment. However, as with any new technology, what needs to be secured is uncertain. “Unless there is compelling evidence that mirror life poses no extraordinary dangers, we believe that mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms should not be created, even those with engineered biocontainment measures,” the authors write in Science. “We therefore recommend that research aimed at creating mirror bacteria should not be permitted and that funders should be made clear that they will not support such work.”
“We want to initiate a global discussion.”
Dr. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the report, worked on a mirror cell but changed her mind about her own research last year after becoming fully aware of the risks. “We shouldn’t be creating mirror life,” she says. “We have time for the conversation. And that’s what we wanted to achieve with this manifesto: to initiate a global discussion. (…) The ability to create a mirror-image life is likely at least a decade in the future and would require large investments and significant technical advances. So we have an opportunity to consider risks and prevent them before they materialize.”
Just the latest fear porn?
Nothing more than the latest fear porn? Kelsey Piper, a writer for the US online magazine Vox, initially assumed the same thing: “We’re all used to sensational headlines about one catastrophe or another looming on the horizon. So I can’t blame anyone who shrugs off the news in exhaustion when they read that dozens of scientists are warning about mirror bacteria that could cause catastrophic ecosystem collapse and even mass extinction. After all, we already have looming threats like H5N1 to worry about, and more generally, we live in a time that, as Adam Kirsch recently wrote in The Atlantic, feels like ‘a constant apocalypse.’ The news about the mirror bacteria came the same week we learned that a much-publicized study about how our black spatulas are killing us was actually just the result of a math error. It’s hard to distinguish which problems are truly life-threatening and which are just headlines that are forgotten a month later. But after looking more deeply into the topic of Mirror bacteria, I have bad news: It’s real, and it’s really serious.” We are indeed dealing with “a completely new development” here, “which could mean the end of the world.”
Clumsy diversionary tactic?
Prof. Paul Freemont of Imperial College London praises the scientific appeal of the 38 scientists as an “excellent example of responsible research and innovation.” Physician Dr. Dave Atkinson sees in it a “virtuous statement that underscores their concern for biosafety.”
But there could be other motives behind the loud warning, suspects the consumer protection organization GMWatch. “Focusing on potential future risks of ‘Mirror Life’ is a dangerous distraction from the immediate problem of ongoing gain-of-function research, which could already trigger another pandemic.”
Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and a biosafety expert, also sees the Science article “and the accompanying media attention as a deliberate, desperate attempt to distract from the real and urgent threat posed by current virology—which caused the coronavirus pandemic and will likely cause the next one.”
“Dodging sensitive questions”
Louis R. Nemzer, a professor of biophysics at Nova Southeastern University, calls the scientists’ move “a cost-effective way to play tough on biosecurity,” adding, “By sounding the alarm about something that is hypothetical and decades in the future, they can sidestep both the thorny questions of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in the past and the question of how gain-of-function research should be regulated in the future.”
Furthermore, wouldn’t a shrill alarm be appropriate for all kinds of synthetic biology, not just “mirror” tinkering? Extreme genetic engineering, which can create entirely new life forms with unforeseeable consequences, is advancing rapidly. It creates artificial cells, new DNA, and entire genomes of novel bacteria and viruses. In March 2016, the J. Craig Venter Institute presented JCVI-syn3.0: the first synthetic bacterial cell, based on Mycoplasma mycoides, with only 531,560 base pairs and 493 genes, a third of which have unknown functions – the smallest genome of a self-replicating organism ever constructed. This concoction contains 19 additional genes, among other things, to stabilize its shape and make it more capable of dividing.
Where is the line between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” risks? So far, governments and scientists have been unable to agree on how to regulate mirror life research and contain potential harm. As always, when in doubt, long live progress – provided it promises to open up new, highly lucrative business areas.
(Harald Wiesendanger)