How should ‘mirror life’ research be restricted?

[John Clark]

Monday's issue of the Journal Nature contained this article: 

How should ‘mirror life’ research be restricted?

The article doesn't mention the enormous increase in intelligence we've seen in AIs over the last couple of years but I think it adds more urgency to the question. And I thought the following quotation was especially interesting: 

"Over the past decade, molecular biologist Ting Zhu at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China, has been constructing systems to ease the production of large mirror-image biomolecules. He started with mirror-image polymerases — enzymes that can copy mirror-image DNA and transfer that genetic information into mirror-image RNA. In 2022, he used that approach to make key building blocks of a simplified mirror-image ribosome,  the complex cellular machinery that translates genetic information to build proteins. A mirror-image ribosome, Zhu says, “could dramatically accelerate pharmaceutical discovery by enabling high-throughput production of mirror-image peptides”.

"Zhu, who cannot attend the Manchester meeting, says he has never wanted to create a mirror-image cell, and adds that he’s still many years away from even making a functional mirror-image ribosome. There are some who think his work on the mirror-image ribosome could pose a threat, however.  John Glass, a synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California says “It is my view that achieving construction of a mirror ribosome is probably the hardest part of the process of making a living mirror cell” . So, is he calling on Zhu to halt his work on the mirror-image ribosome? After a long pause, Glass answers: “Maybe. I think it shouldn’t be made.”"

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

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