One thing these other scientists brought up that was extremely surprising to her was that “mirror cells would likely be completely invisible to the human immune system,” Adamala added. “I used to think the immune system will find a way to detect any invading biomolecules. I didn’t know how chiral the immune system was.”
Saving grace and we need more scientists like her;
Adamala, along with her colleagues, chose not to renew her research grant, ending her lab’s work on mirror cells. She is focusing instead on discussions around how to regulate mirror life research.
Note: Stanford's detailed 300-page Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks linked to in the above article - https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036
> Saving grace and we need more scientists like her;
No, they are alarmist. The immune system can produce antibodies with arbitrary shapes that can trap the mirrored versions too.
Doing something like that is super ultra mega expensive.
Also, the mirrored version of bacteria can not eat the normal version of proteins and sugars, only fat because a mirrored fat is identical to a normal one, so mirrored life will be in a bad position.
Unless someone designs the mirrored enzymes that is beyond our current knowledge. Or someone cherrypick some of the enzymes that normal bacterias use to eat the minor amount of the mirrored natural molecules, but this means that normal bacterias will eat the mirrored ones.
And mirrored virus are useless, because they need normal DNA/RNA to reuse our DNA/RNA machinery.
rramadass•3mo ago
> No, they are alarmist.
Absolutely not. If a leading researcher goes so far as to refuse grants and shuts down her research into mirror life, we better take her seriously and look at the subject matter carefully.
You are making some definitive statements which cannot be accepted unless you have the necessary background and knowledge. That is why i linked to the Stanford technical report itself. I am still going through it and trying to get the overall picture and concerns. The report is 200 pages (most of which are about the risks involved to plants/animals/humans and environmental spread) + another 100 for references!
I highly encourage others to study it too in order to have a good idea of this frontier of biological science.
gus_massa•3mo ago
Sorry for the delay, it has been a busy week and it will continue busy, so I'll reply before reading the 300 pages report. I'll try to read it another day, ...
> You are making some definitive statements which cannot be accepted unless you have the necessary background and knowledge.
Which one you think it's wrong? I can try to clarify it or acknowledged my mistake(s).
> I linked to the Stanford technical report itself
Note that it's a report hosted in a Stanford "preprint" server, not a report made or signed by Stanford. Nobody has reviewed it. It's more interesting to read https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158 that is peer review, but that does not guaranty correctness and it's published in the "policy forum" section.
I'm not impressed about 100 pages of references. Going to a stupid extreme, a report about Flat Earth can cite papers that are about the density of rocks, or the strength, or whatever, hundred of them. It does not mean that the references support their conclusions.
From the CNN article:
> However, most experts agree that making a synthetic cell with natural chirality is safe, because if a bacterium made from a synthetic cell were to enter an environment, it would be subject to the normal controls of any ecosystem, making it easy prey to natural predators such as viruses that target bacteria. Thus, it wouldn’t be able to spread uncontrollably.
Did you spot the mistake? Normal virus will definitively not target mirror bacterias. Anyway, I expect other bacterias to target them, to eat their tasty fats.
rramadass•3mo ago
You clearly have not read anything.
> Nobody has reviewed it.
Page-2 titled "Report Authors" gives you the whole list of authors involved in compiling the report all of whom you can lookup on the web. Page-3 is titled "Review" and says Prior to release, feedback on scope, completeness, accuracy, and presentation of the analysis was solicited from scientific experts in each of the areas covered by the report. Experts were invited to comment on one or several chapters of the report... followed by a whole list of reviewers all of whom you can again lookup on the web.
The "Technical Report" (which is where the meat lies) is attached as supplement-1 to the above paper and hence the reason i pointed to it. The Science article is just an overview and you are expected to read the reference materials for a more detailed understanding.
> I'm not impressed about 100 pages of references.
Your opinion is laughable and dismissed out-of-hand. For a Technical Report dealing in the frontiers of scientific research, references are key since there is a lot which must be brought together to build up the overall picture. That is the reason for the authors including such an extensive list of references showing how they arrived at the points/conclusions listed in the report. It is invaluable and a foundation of the scientific method.
rramadass•3mo ago
One thing these other scientists brought up that was extremely surprising to her was that “mirror cells would likely be completely invisible to the human immune system,” Adamala added. “I used to think the immune system will find a way to detect any invading biomolecules. I didn’t know how chiral the immune system was.”
Saving grace and we need more scientists like her;
Adamala, along with her colleagues, chose not to renew her research grant, ending her lab’s work on mirror cells. She is focusing instead on discussions around how to regulate mirror life research.
Note: Stanford's detailed 300-page Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks linked to in the above article - https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036
gus_massa•3mo ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Mirror+life
> Saving grace and we need more scientists like her;
No, they are alarmist. The immune system can produce antibodies with arbitrary shapes that can trap the mirrored versions too.
Doing something like that is super ultra mega expensive.
Also, the mirrored version of bacteria can not eat the normal version of proteins and sugars, only fat because a mirrored fat is identical to a normal one, so mirrored life will be in a bad position.
Unless someone designs the mirrored enzymes that is beyond our current knowledge. Or someone cherrypick some of the enzymes that normal bacterias use to eat the minor amount of the mirrored natural molecules, but this means that normal bacterias will eat the mirrored ones.
And mirrored virus are useless, because they need normal DNA/RNA to reuse our DNA/RNA machinery.
rramadass•3mo ago
Absolutely not. If a leading researcher goes so far as to refuse grants and shuts down her research into mirror life, we better take her seriously and look at the subject matter carefully.
You are making some definitive statements which cannot be accepted unless you have the necessary background and knowledge. That is why i linked to the Stanford technical report itself. I am still going through it and trying to get the overall picture and concerns. The report is 200 pages (most of which are about the risks involved to plants/animals/humans and environmental spread) + another 100 for references!
I highly encourage others to study it too in order to have a good idea of this frontier of biological science.
gus_massa•3mo ago
> You are making some definitive statements which cannot be accepted unless you have the necessary background and knowledge.
Which one you think it's wrong? I can try to clarify it or acknowledged my mistake(s).
> I linked to the Stanford technical report itself
Note that it's a report hosted in a Stanford "preprint" server, not a report made or signed by Stanford. Nobody has reviewed it. It's more interesting to read https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158 that is peer review, but that does not guaranty correctness and it's published in the "policy forum" section.
I'm not impressed about 100 pages of references. Going to a stupid extreme, a report about Flat Earth can cite papers that are about the density of rocks, or the strength, or whatever, hundred of them. It does not mean that the references support their conclusions.
From the CNN article:
> However, most experts agree that making a synthetic cell with natural chirality is safe, because if a bacterium made from a synthetic cell were to enter an environment, it would be subject to the normal controls of any ecosystem, making it easy prey to natural predators such as viruses that target bacteria. Thus, it wouldn’t be able to spread uncontrollably.
Did you spot the mistake? Normal virus will definitively not target mirror bacterias. Anyway, I expect other bacterias to target them, to eat their tasty fats.
rramadass•3mo ago
> Nobody has reviewed it.
Page-2 titled "Report Authors" gives you the whole list of authors involved in compiling the report all of whom you can lookup on the web. Page-3 is titled "Review" and says Prior to release, feedback on scope, completeness, accuracy, and presentation of the analysis was solicited from scientific experts in each of the areas covered by the report. Experts were invited to comment on one or several chapters of the report... followed by a whole list of reviewers all of whom you can again lookup on the web.
> It's more interesting to read https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158 that is peer review, but that does not guaranty correctness and it's published in the "policy forum" section.
The "Technical Report" (which is where the meat lies) is attached as supplement-1 to the above paper and hence the reason i pointed to it. The Science article is just an overview and you are expected to read the reference materials for a more detailed understanding.
> I'm not impressed about 100 pages of references.
Your opinion is laughable and dismissed out-of-hand. For a Technical Report dealing in the frontiers of scientific research, references are key since there is a lot which must be brought together to build up the overall picture. That is the reason for the authors including such an extensive list of references showing how they arrived at the points/conclusions listed in the report. It is invaluable and a foundation of the scientific method.