by Our cells our Chiral eg Lefty or Righty, in the construction of their parts. What if someone made a cell that was inverted. Might be cool, might be apocalyptic. “You were so focused on if you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should!” – Paraphrasing Dr. Ian Malcom, Survivor of the Jurassic Park disaster.
“At first, people were questioning whether those concerns are actually as serious as we thought they were. And so we were trying to poke holes in it, trying to find ways in which we were wrong,” Adamala said. “The more we looked, the more we were certain, and more people were coming on board to this idea that there actually is no safe way to make a mirror cell.”
He also noted that the risks of mirror cells or organisms, should they be unleashed, are unknown. “This (organism) could just starve to death, which we think is probably the most likely thing, or consume all the resources in the Earth and compete with all existing life,” Kay said. “That’s a huge range.”
However, he said the ongoing attempts to weigh the risks are important: “I think any effort that buys us time to better understand and better consider the risks and to, you know, just be more deliberate in the way the technologies are advanced, rather than just having a free for all, I think that’s beneficial. And we have the time, you know, for that to happen,” Kay added. “This is not imminent.”
Glass’ initial conversations with Relman in April 2024 about the potential risks of mirror life left him “shaken,” he remembered. “It made me wonder if the thing, the work that I have been doing for years, could be enabling, one day, the mirror bacteria-based Armageddon that we fear,” he said.
