this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

found a new movie plot threat https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158

funded by open philanthropy, but not only and also got some other biologists onboard. 10 out of 39 authors had open philanthropy funding in the last 5 years so they're likely EAs. highly speculative as of now and not anywhere close to being made, as in we'll be dead from global warming before this gets anywhere close from my understanding. also starting materials would be hideously expensive because all of this has to be synthetic and enantiopure, and every technique has to be remade from scratch in unnatural enantiomer form. it even has LW thread by now hxxps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/87pTGnHAvqk3FC7Zk/the-dangers-of-mirrored-life

it hit news https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/science/a-second-tree-of-life-could-wreak-havoc-scientists-warn.html https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/12/unprecedented-risk-to-life-on-earth-scientists-call-for-halt-on-mirror-life-microbe-research

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I read the headline yesterday and thought, "This is 100% fundraising bullshit."

This strikes me as being exact same class of thing OpenAI does when they pronounce that their product will murder us all.

What do we call this? Marketerrorism?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i see how it's critihype but i don't understand where's money in this one

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

CRITIHYPE, thank you! I couldn't find the word!

If I had to guess a motive, it would be to bring mirror biology out of the obscurity of pure research (who funds that anymore?) and to instead plant it firmly into the popular zeitgeist as a "scary thing" that needs to be defended against. This can lead to it becoming a trendy topic, and therefore fundable by grant-awarding agencies.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

as in, funding for writing ratty screeds? because they specifically want to cut funding to d-proteins and such. this also works for fundraising

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Maybe I'm being to cynical. It wouldn't be the first time this week that someone drew a spooky picture, would it?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Mirror bacteria? Boring! I want an evil twin from the negaverse who looks exactly like me except right hande-- oh heck. What if I'm the mirror twin?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm definitely out of my depth here, but how exactly does a lefty organism bypass immune responses and still interact with the body? Seems like if it has a way to mess up healthy cells then it should have something that antibodies can connect to, mirrored or not. Not that I'm arguing we shouldn't be careful about creating novel pathogens, but other than being a more flashy sci-fi premise I'm not really seeing how it's more dangerous than the right-handed version.

Also I think this opens up a beautiful world of new scientific naming conventions:

  • Southpaw Paramecium
  • Lefty Naegleria
  • Sinister Influenza
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

they way i understand it, because immune system is basically constantly fuzzing all potentially new things, what is important is how antigen looks like on the surface. what it is made from matters less, and whether aminoacids there are l- (natural) or d- (not) it shouldn't matter that much, antibodies are generated for nonnatural achiral things all the time including things like PEG and chloronitrobenzene. then complement system puts holes in bacterial membrane and that's it, it's not survivable for bacterium and does not depend on anything chiral. normally all components are promptly shredded, it's a good question if that would happen too but, like - this might not matter too hard - there's a way for immune system to smite this thing

the potential problem is that peptides made from d-aminoacids are harder to cut via hydrolases and it's a part of some more involved immune response idk details. there's plenty of stuff that's achiral like glycerol, glycine, beta-alanine, TCA components, fatty acids that mirrored bacteria can feed on without problems. some normal bacteria also use d-aminoacids so normal l-aminoacids should be usable for d-protein bacteria. there's also transaminase that takes d-aminoacids and along with other enzymes it can turn these into l-aminoacids. but even more importantly we're perhaps 30 years away from making this anywhere close to feasible, it's all highly speculative. there's a report if you want to read it https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:cv716pj4036/Technical%20Report%20on%20Mirror%20Bacteria%20Feasibility%20and%20Risks.pdf