YHK - yet another hacker news clone

TL;DR: Don't.

The "Potential Risks" section of the wiki is a bit thin on the mechanisms of the danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-image_life#Potential_ri...

'In December 2024, 38 scientists, including several synthetic biology researchers and two Nobel laureates, warned that the creation of mirror-image life could cause "unprecedented and irreversible harm" to human health and ecosystems worldwide. The reversed structure of mirror-image bacteria could allow them to evade many mechanisms critical for immunity and predation that have evolved to recognize natural-chirality structures. As a result, mirror-image bacteria could potentially escape immune defenses and invade natural ecosystems, leading to "pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of plant and animal species, including humans."'

Stuff our immune system doesn't recognize is potentially useful for things like vaccine delivery. But it's also useful for a potential pathogen.

We already make use of "mirror" molecules; the idea is that mirror organisms could help efficiently create these for us (like how we can use yeast and fungi etc to create various chemicals).

Of course there is also the whole potential apocalypse scenario

weapons

The primary proposed benefit of creating mirror-image organisms is as a means to mass-produce mirror-image forms of molecules that are produced by normal life. Mirror-image molecules have been studied for several decades and may offer a range of potential applications. There is broad agreement among scientists that it is important to distinguish between mirror-image molecules and whole mirror-image organisms. Some scientists argue that chemical synthesis methods are sufficient for creating mirror-image molecules without posing the potentially catastrophic risks of mirror-image organisms.

Potential applications of mirror-image molecules include:

Enantiopure drugs: Some pharmaceuticals show different activity depending on enantiomeric form.

L-ribonucleic acid aptamers: Artificial oligonucleotides that are constructed from the mirror-image versions of their natural forms. L-RNA aptamers are highly resistant to degradation by nucleases and are currently being tested in clinical trials.

L-glucose, enantiomer of standard glucose: Tests showed that it tastes likes standard sugar, but is not metabolized the same way. However, it was never marketed due to excessive manufacturing costs. More recent research allows cheap production with high yields; however the authors state that it is not usable as a sweetener due to laxative effects.

[From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-image_life]

I had read somewhere that it could allow the creation of cures that would not trigger the immune system, since they would use chirality to hide, so to speak.

As a diabetic, I would love "mirror wheat" which behaves like normal wheat (ie can make breads, etc) but has zero carbs/calories because the body can't digest it. Mirror glucose would be nice too, though allulose is already a pretty close stand in for mirror glucose.

A stronger understanding of organic chemistry.

What do you do for work? I'm sure we can figure out how it also contributes to ending the world, one way or another :)

Yeah, what if this behaves like prions?

Where's the fun in that?

Hyperbole aside, has the risk of this been truly studied?

All I hear is "there's no danger" or "OMG this will kill us all" and in neither case is any reason given.

I'm sure nature has already tried these "mirror" forms, and for efficiency/practicality reasons, discarded them.

well, you are the expert!

more seriously: how would it be able search for something it has no experience seeing at all

"A sufficiently stereochemically alien pathogen could, in principle, place essentially all of its important antigenic determinants outside the effective recognition repertoire of a conventional adaptive immune system."

With perfect knowledge of the immune system and the capability to create the pathogens of our dreams it would most likely be possible to create this pathogen of our dreams.

Making an entire self replicating mirror organism that would both have this property of "being invisible to the specific immune system" and AND being an effective pathogen is far from a solved problem though. It's further away as useful quantum computing!

We don't even have self replicating mirror cells, just some synthetic Frankensteins.

>βehemoth

How I read that? Like Ssehemoth or like Behemoth?

  In [1]: ord("β")
  Out[1]: 946

  In [2]: ord("ß")
  Out[2]: 223

"people will do ANYTHING to cure a disease"

Or to make a couple of bucks. Reading that mirror-image sugars could work as calorie-free sweeteners feels like foreshadowing for the end of the world.

Now the race to build mirror antibiotics.