From Newsgroup: talk.origins


https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/pause-mirror-life/

On a molecular level, life as we know it has a
surprising bias. The building blocks of life rCo DNA,
RNA, and proteins rCo have a rCLhandedness,rCY like our
left and right hands. For reasons still unclear,
nature almost exclusively uses right-handed DNA
and left-handed proteins. But what if science
flipped the script?

In labs around the world, scientists have
tinkered with this idea, crafting mirror versions
of liferCOs essential molecules. These synthetic
creations could revolutionize therapies for
diseases and contamination-resistant
manufacturing. At the same time, reversing a
moleculerCOs handedness could cause untold harm.

This week, nearly 40 scientists rCo including two
Nobel laureates rCo raised a chilling alarm. The
creation of rCLmirror liferCY rCo synthetic organisms
made of these reversed molecules rCo could lead to
catastrophic consequences. Their nearly 300-page
report, published in Science, is unequivocal:
research on mirror microbes should stop before
itrCOs too late.

rCLThe threat werCOre talking about is
unprecedented,rCY said Professor Vaughn Cooper, a
microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
rCLMirror bacteria would likely evade many human,
animal, and plant immune system responses and in
each case would cause lethal infections that
would spread without check.rCY
...

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From Newsgroup: talk.origins

On 7/18/2025 11:58 PM, Pro Plyd wrote:

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/pause-mirror-life/

On a molecular level, life as we know it has a
surprising bias. The building blocks of life rCo DNA,
RNA, and proteins rCo have a rCLhandedness,rCY like our
left and right hands. For reasons still unclear,
nature almost exclusively uses right-handed DNA
and left-handed proteins. But what if science
flipped the script?

In labs around the world, scientists have
tinkered with this idea, crafting mirror versions
of liferCOs essential molecules. These synthetic
creations could revolutionize therapies for
diseases and contamination-resistant
manufacturing. At the same time, reversing a
moleculerCOs handedness could cause untold harm.

This week, nearly 40 scientists rCo including two
Nobel laureates rCo raised a chilling alarm. The
creation of rCLmirror liferCY rCo synthetic organisms
made of these reversed molecules rCo could lead to
catastrophic consequences. Their nearly 300-page
report, published in Science, is unequivocal:
research on mirror microbes should stop before
itrCOs too late.

rCLThe threat werCOre talking about is
unprecedented,rCY said Professor Vaughn Cooper, a
microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
rCLMirror bacteria would likely evade many human,
animal, and plant immune system responses and in
each case would cause lethal infections that
would spread without check.rCY
...

Some bacteria already use D amino acids as a type of defense mechanism.
This is the type of "mirror" use that they are worried about. It isn't
making a fully mirror lifeform. That likely is not possible. About all
that can be accomplished is alteration of some existing organism to
survive having a higher concentration of D amino acids in the cell and
this cell might be altered to use these D amino acids in some limited
way just as some bacteria already do.

It would be a neat trick if they could make a mirror lifeform. You
would need to alter all the metabolic enzymes that not only produce the
L form amino acid or the D form carbohydrate, but you would have to
figure out how to make enzymes that are composed of D form amino acids
that would fold into the shape that would form the enzymatic activity. Creating replacement D form amino acid proteins with the correct
enzymatic activity is likely not possible with existing technology.
None of the folding programs and protein structure predictions would
likely work because they have all been trained using L form amino acids.
D amino acids would not form the same protein structure as the L amino
acids do. When D amino acids are put in a peptide chain by mistake the protein usually loses function. If extension continues the resulting
protein is usually misfolded. A replacement polymer of D amino acids
would just be gibberish.

Ron Okimoto

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