Found this in Slashdot; copied URL here to see how other people might react to this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/08/31/mirror-life-scientists-push-for-ban/85866520007/
Me, I think this is pretty terrifying. Change my mind, please.
Too bad Michael Crichton isn't alive…
byu/Break_All_Illusions inFuturology
6 Comments
I definitely don’t want anyone trying it in practice but it is possible that mirrored cells would simply not survive in natural enviroment because there are too many substances deadly to them.
Change Agent https://share.google/FCiwZb71OglWAD0tt
*”They were so busy seeing if they could do it that they didn’t think if they should.”*
— Dr. Ian Malcolm, Chaostitian
Do you want the andromeda strain? Because that’s how you get the andromeda strain.
Pretty terrifying. But the possible controlled use in medicine is an intriguing idea.
Left handed chirality DNA and RNA are more unstable than normal one. Also many sugars with oposite chirality are more stable and inert thus less avaliable for energy production.
The mirror life would need additional time for evolution to adapt to use normal sugars as mirror ones need more investment in energy to brake down thus energy economy is bad and waste temperature is higher.
The last one is also important as higher operational temperature might negatively affect the more unstable mirror DNA and denture it thus destroying it.
Also problematic is protein folding. Mirror amino acids will have different chemical properties and static charges will be different so protein folding would be problematic.
Mirror amino acids can not produce mirror proteins as rules of folding will create different shapes and entirely new evolutionary direction would be needed to evolve working proteins made of mirror amino acids.
Probably those proteins would be smaller, more diverse and able to whistand higher operational temperature.
In principle mirror life would operate with higher waste temperature which will endanger mirror DNA/RNA if this kind of life would operate in Earthlike enviroment.
There is a reason why life on Earth has right-handed chirality DNA and that is because it can easily outcompete the mirror one.
On the other hand mirror life would be more suited for very cold enviroment like on Titan.
Higher waste temperature and smaller proteins are perfect for those methane oceans. That life doesn’t need to use sugars for energy but hydrocarbons and sulphur as oxidizer. Another mirror effect of this is that that life would breathe food and eat oxidizer.
TL;DR mirror life would have unstable DNA/RNA at normal temperature, would use smaller proteins, operet with higher waste temperature and probably use hydrocarbon/sulphur metabolism, perfect for very cold enviromend but useless in Earth enviroment.
There is probably no danger from mirror life on Earth.