Scientists issue an urgent warning over lab-made ‘mirror life’ that could wipe out mankind

Leading scientists have urgently warned of the ‘unprecedented’ risk that lab-made life poses could wipe out humanity.

So-called ‘mirror life’ are synthetic organisms that are made up of mirrored versions of the molecules that occur in nature.

Experts warn that these mirror organisms would be ‘invisible’ to life on Earth, allowing them to slip past the immune defenses of all known organisms.

If mirror bacteria escaped from the laboratory, nothing would stop them from establishing themselves in the wild and threatening plants, animals and humans with deadly infections.

The creation of mirror bacteria will take at least another ten years, but in a 300-page technical overview published in Sciencethe authors note that rapid progress is already being made.

A group of 38 Nobel laureates and other experts, including some who have previously tried to create mirror life, are now calling for a pause in all new research.

Dr. Vaughn Cooper, a microbiologist from the University of Pittsburgh and co-author of the paper, says: ‘This life form never existed or evolved, and as a result, any biological interactions would be different or probably not work.

‘We don’t want to limit the promise of synthetic biology, but building a mirror bacterium is not worth the risk.’

Just as your left hand is a mirror image of your right, many biological molecules also have a left- and right-handed mirror molecule.

What makes this characteristic so important to biology is that it does not vary from species to species; the molecules that make up all life on Earth have the same dexterity.

For example, DNA’s spiral double helix is ​​right-handed, while proteins are made up of left-handed amino acids.

But as far as scientists can tell, the fact that our DNA is right-handed is an evolutionary fluke, and there’s no reason that life couldn’t have evolved from mirrored components.

So while mirror life cannot evolve from life as we know it, scientists believe it is possible to create an organism in which all biological molecules are mirrored.

What would make this so risky is that life on Earth has only evolved to deal with one form of molecule.

Co-author Professor Gregory Winter, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist from the University of Cambridge, told MailOnline: ‘The risk of mirror life, in particular mirror bacteria, is that living organisms would not recognize their mirror counterparts as ‘alien’ and would not have the natural have defense mechanisms to protect themselves against attacks from them.

Scientists have called for a pause on the creation of ‘mirror bacteria’ as they could evade the immune defenses of all life on Earth and lead to potentially fatal infections (stock image)

‘For example, people would have difficulty producing antibodies against the mirror bacteria and would not be able to control an infection. Similar arguments apply to all other living organisms, including plants attacked by mirror bacteria.’

Likewise, bacteria’s natural enemies also rely largely on the dexterity of their prey’s molecules to kill bacteria.

This means that nothing stops the harmful mirror bacteria from escaping into the wild and reproducing uncontrollably.

The authors write: ‘We cannot rule out a scenario in which a mirror bacterium acts as an invasive species in many ecosystems, causing ubiquitous fatal infections in a significant proportion of plant and animal species, including humans.’

Even if humans find a way to defend themselves against this new threat, mirror bacteria could still destabilize large parts of the world’s ecosystem.

Co-author Dr Nicholas Talbot, plant disease expert and executive director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, told MailOnline: ‘It seems very likely that a mirror bacterium could infect some plants.

‘If major food crops were susceptible, the impact would be devastating, in addition to the other effects.’

The good news is that the technology to create mirror life is still a long way off.

In their article, the authors note that there have been important breakthroughs in the creation of mirror molecules and the construction of artificial cells.

Unlike most of the world’s deadliest pathogens (illustrated), there would be no way to defend against mirror bacteria. Mirror bacteria could also infect any organism regardless of species, potentially leading to massive ecological damage and a devastating pandemic

However, making synthetic molecules is extremely expensive and would require huge breakthroughs in synthetic cell research.

Dr. Talbot says: ‘The technical hurdles to creating mirror bacteria are significant, so it will probably take at least another decade before this is possible, but we were so concerned about the risk that we wanted to have a public debate about this long before it became a phenomenon . reality.’

The researchers call for more scrutiny of their research and conclude that mirror bacteria should not be created unless compelling evidence emerges to the contrary.

While there are some potential benefits of mirror bacteria, such as biological drug synthesis and medical applications, the authors argue that the risks are not worth it.

Dr. Cooper concludes: ‘It would take a huge effort to build such an organism, but we need to halt that progress and have an organized, inclusive dialogue about how to govern it effectively.’