Re: Speaking of chirality - "mirror cell" could be a majorn threat

 Great idea for a sci fi story. Like Andromeda Strain.
 Or
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater
 Other related links here
 <https://news.google.com/stories/ CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoRUtEd2lwZ0xqeURCRWhCb2xna2Ewck9DZ0FQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
 https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientist-working-create-mirror- life-013650643.html
Updated December 20, 2024
 A scientist working to create 'mirror life'
discovered it could be 'a perfect bioweapon.'
She's asking other researchers to stop.
 * A mirror microorganism could end up being a
major pathogen since immune systems wouldn't
notice it.
 * Mirror-image biology inverts a fundamental
property of life on Earth: which way molecules
point.
 ...
Mirror biology takes a fundamental rule of
life on Earth, called chirality, and flips it.
 Chirality is the simple fact that molecules —
like sugars and amino acids — point in one of
two directions. They are either right-handed
or left-handed.
 For some reason, though, life uses only one
chiral form of each molecule. DNA, for example,
uses only right-handed sugars for its backbone.
That's why it twists to the right.
 In mirror biology, scientists aim to create
living cells where all the chirality is flipped.
Where natural life uses a right-handed peptide
to build proteins, mirror life would use the
same peptide in its left-handed form.
...
A mirror pathogen "doesn't interact with the
host," Adamala said. "It just uses it as a warm
incubator with a lot of nutrients."
 If a mirror bacteria escaped the lab, it could
cause slow, persistent infections that couldn't
be treated with antibiotics (because those,
too, rely on chirality).
 Because they wouldn't face immune resistance,
mirror bacteria wouldn't need to specialize in
infecting corn, or goats, or birds.
 "It would be a disease of anything that lives
that can be infected," Adamala said.
 In the worst-case scenario, a mirror bacteria
would multiply endlessly, unfettered. It would
take over its hosts and eventually kill them.
It would destroy crops. It would have no
predators. It would overwhelm entire
ecosystems, swapping out portions of our
natural world for a new mirror world.
...