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Mirror-image life (also called mirror life) is a hypothetical form of life using mirror-reflected molecular building blocks.
The successful creation of mirror-image life had previously been the goal of some scientists as a scientific achievement and a potential tool for biomanufacturing of mirror-image molecules. In 2024, a team of 38 scientists, including two Nobel Prize and several researchers involved in its development, published a report suggesting that mirror-image life could pose serious risks to health and the environment. Unlike simple mirror-image molecules, mirror-image organisms such as bacteria could reproduce and might irreversibly spread through ecosystems. Such bacteria may also be able to evade many components of immune systems, causing fatal infections in humans, animals, and plants. Some scientists, bioethicists, policymakers, and civil society groups have recommended that governance be established to ensure that mirror-image life is not created, and some funders have refused to support research with the goal of creating mirror-image life. Discussions are ongoing about the risks of mirror life and appropriate governance.
Certain mirror-image components of molecular machinery have been synthesized in laboratories and efforts to chemically synthesize a mirror-image ribosome have been ongoing since 2016. Although entire mirror organisms could in principle be created, some scientists estimate 10 to 30 years before the creation of mirror-image life is possible.
Advances in organic chemistry and synthetic biology may, in the future, lead to the possibility of fully synthesizing a living cell from small molecules, which could enable synthesizing mirror-image cells from mirrored versions () of life's building-block molecules. Some important proteins in the central dogma of molecular biology have been synthesized in mirror-image versions, including DNA polymerase in 2016 and RNA polymerase in 2022.
Reconstructing regular lifeforms in mirror-image form, using the mirror-image (chiral) reflection of their cellular components, could be achieved by substituting left-handed amino acids with right-handed ones, in order to create mirror reflections of proteins, and likewise substituting right-handed with left-handed nucleic acids. Because the of cell membranes are also chiral, American geneticist George Church proposed using an achiral fatty acid instead of mirror-image phospholipids for the membrane.
Electromagnetism, the dominant interaction in chemistry, is unchanged under mirror-image transformation (P-symmetry). There is a small alteration of under reflection, which can produce very small corrections that theoretically favor the natural enantiomers of amino acids and sugars, but it is unknown if this effect is large enough to affect the functionality of mirror-image biomolecules or explain homochirality in nature.
Since the publication of the 2024 paper, 96 biotechnology experts signed a statement agreeing with its conclusions, and attendees of the first international conference on mirror-image life largely agreed that it should not be created. Germany’s Central Commission for Biological Safety (ZKBS) issued a statement that while applied research on mirror biomolecules should continue, mirror bacteria could pose serious risks, and that "a broad scientific and societal debate" was necessary. The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee recommended a precautionary global moratorium on the creation of mirror-image organisms, and the UK Government Office for Science held an expert roundtable that recommended "preventing the development of replicating mirror organisms." Several philanthropic funders have also stated that they will not fund research with the goal of creating mirror-image organisms.
Some scientists and scholars have argued that concerns about mirror-image life are theoretical and/or that bans on research and funding bans are premature. For example, a group of authors has argued that the immune system might be able to recognize mirror versions of a certain type of biomolecule. Others have emphasized the importance of distinguishing between research on mirror-image molecules, which offer potential benefits, and the creation of whole mirror-image organisms, and proposed developing guidelines for synthetic biological entities regardless of their chirality.
Potential applications of mirror-image molecules include:
In the 1970 Star Trek novel Spock Must Die! by James Blish, the science officer of the USS Enterprise is replicated in mirror-image form by a transporter mishap. He locks himself in the sick bay where he is able to synthesize mirror-image forms of basic nutrients needed for his survival.
An alien machine that reverses chirality, and a blood-symbiont that functions properly only when in one chirality, were central to Roger Zelazny's 1976 novel Doorways in the Sand.
On the titular planet of Sheri S. Tepper's 1989 novel Grass, some lifeforms have evolved to use the right-handed isomer of alanine.
In the Mass Effect series, chirality of amino acids in foodstuffs is discussed often in both dialogue and encyclopedia files.
In the 2014 science fiction novel Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey, the planet Ilus has indigenous life with partially-mirrored chirality. This renders human colonists unable to digest native flora and fauna, and greatly complicates conventional farming. Consequently, the colonists have to rely upon hydroponics and food importation.
In the 2017 Daniel Suarez novel Change Agent, an antagonist, Otto, nicknamed the "Mirror Man", is revealed to be a genetically engineered mirror-image human. Serving as an assassin due to his complete immunity to neurotoxins, which he coats himself with in the form of a cologne-like aerosol, he views other humans with disdain and causes them to feel an inexplicable repulsion by his very presence.9781101984666 . ISBN 9781101984666
The concept is used during Ryan North's 2023 run on Fantastic Four as an existential threat towards the human population.
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