Mirror life

Mirror life (also called mirror-image life) is a hypothetical form of life with mirror-reflected molecular building blocks.[1][2][3][4][5] The possibility of mirror life was first discussed by Louis Pasteur.[6] Although this alternative life form has not been discovered in nature, efforts to build a mirror-image version of biology's molecular machinery are already underway.[7]

In December 2024, a broad coalition of scientists, including leading synthetic biology researchers and Nobel laureates, have warned that the creation of mirror life, including mirror bacteria, could cause "unprecedented and irreversible harm" to human health and ecosystems worldwide.[8][9] Its potential to escape immune defenses and invade natural ecosystems might lead to "pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of plant and animal species, including humans." Given these risks, the scientists concluded that mirror organisms should not be created without compelling evidence of safety.[8]

Homochirality

Many of the essential molecules for life on Earth can exist in two mirror-image forms, often referred to as "left-handed" and "right-handed" where ‘handedness’ refers to the direction in which polarized light skews when beamed through a pure solution of the molecule, but living organisms do not use both.[10] Proteins are exclusively composed of left-handed amino acids; RNA and DNA contain only right-handed sugars. This phenomenon is known as homochirality.[11] It is not known whether homochirality emerged before or after life, whether the building blocks of life must have this particular chirality, or indeed whether life needs to be homochiral.[12] Protein chains built from amino acids of mixed chirality tend not to fold or function well, but mirror-image proteins have been constructed that have identical function but on substrates of opposite handedness.[11]

The concept

Advances in synthetic biology, like synthesizing viruses since 2002, partially synthetic bacteria in 2010, or synthetic ribosomes in 2013, may lead to the possibility of fully synthesizing a living cell from small molecules, which could enable synthesizing mirror cells from mirrored versions (enantiomers) of life's building-block molecules. Some proteins have been synthesized in mirror-image versions, including polymerase in 2016.[13][14]

Reconstructing regular lifeforms in mirror-image form, using the mirror-image (chiral) reflection of their cellular components, could be achieved by substituting left-handed amino acids with right-handed ones, in order to create mirror reflections of proteins, and likewise substituting right-handed with left-handed nucleic acids.[15] Because the phospholipids of cell membranes are also chiral, American geneticist George Church proposed using an achiral fatty acid instead of mirror-image phospholipids for the membrane.[15]

Electromagnetic force (chemistry) is unchanged under such molecular reflection transformation (P-symmetry). There is a small alteration of weak interactions under reflection, which can produce very small corrections that theoretically favor the natural enantiomers of amino acids and sugars,[16] but it is unknown if this effect is large enough to affect the functionality of mirror biomolecules or explain homochirality in nature.[17]

Mirror animals would need to feed on reflected food, produced by reflected plants. Mirror viruses would not be able to attack natural cells, just as natural viruses would not be able to attack mirror cells.[15]

Mirror life presents potential dangers. For example, a chiral-mirror version of cyanobacteria, which only needs achiral nutrients and light for photosynthesis, could take over Earth's ecosystem due to lack of natural enemies, disturbing the bottom of the food chain by producing mirror versions of the required sugars.[15] Some bacteria can digest L-Glucose; exceptions like this would give some rare lifeforms an unanticipated advantage.

Direct applications

Direct application of mirror-chiral organisms can be mass production of enantiomers (mirror-image) of molecules produced by normal life.

  • Enantiopure drugs - some pharmaceuticals have known different activity depending on enantiomeric form,
  • Aptamers (L-ribonucleic acid aptamers): "That makes mirror-image biochemistry a potentially lucrative business. One company that hopes so is Noxxon Pharma in Berlin. It uses laborious chemical synthesis to make mirror-image forms of short strands of DNA or RNA called aptamers, which bind to therapeutic targets such as proteins in the body to block their activity. The firm has several mirror-aptamer candidates in human trials for diseases including cancer; the idea is that their efficacy might be improved because they aren't degraded by the body's enzymes. A process to replicate mirror-image DNA could offer a much easier route to making the aptamers, says Sven Klussmann, Noxxon Pharma's chief scientific officer."[18]
  • L-Glucose, enantiomer of standard glucose, for which tests showed that it tastes likes standard sugar, but not being metabolized the same way. However, it was never marketed due to excessive manufacturing costs.[19] More recent research allows cheap production with high yields, however the authors state that it is not usable as a sweetener due to laxative effects.[20]

In fiction

The creation of a mirror human is the basis of the 1950 short story "Technical Error" by Arthur C. Clarke.[21] In this story, a physical accident transforms a person into his mirror image, speculatively explained by travel through a fourth physical dimension.

In the 1970 Star Trek novel Spock Must Die! by James Blish, the science officer of the USS Enterprise is replicated in mirror form by a transporter mishap. He locks himself in the sick bay where he is able to synthesize mirror forms of basic nutrients needed for his survival.[22]

An alien machine that reverses chirality, and a blood-symbiont that functions properly only when in one chirality, were central to Roger Zelazny's 1976 novel Doorways in the Sand.[23]

On the titular planet of Sheri S. Tepper's 1989 novel Grass, some lifeforms have evolved to use the right-handed isomer of alanine.[24]

In the Mass Effect series, chirality of amino acids in foodstuffs is discussed often in both dialogue and encyclopedia files.

In the 2014 science fiction novel Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey, the planet Ilus has indigenous life with partially-mirrored chirality. This renders human colonists unable to digest native flora and fauna, and greatly complicates conventional farming. Consequently, the colonists have to rely upon hydroponic farming and food importation.[25]

In the 2017 Daniel Suarez novel Change Agent, an antagonist, Otto, nicknamed the "Mirror Man", is revealed to be a genetically-engineered mirror human. He views other humans with disdain and causes them to feel an inexplicable repulsion by his very presence.[26]

The concept is used during Ryan North's 2023 run on Fantastic Four as an existential threat towards the human population.[27]

See also

References

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  9. ^ Zimmer, Carl (12 December 2024). "A 'Second Tree of Life' Could Wreak Havoc, Scientists Warn". New York Times.
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  18. ^ Peplow, Mark (16 May 2016). "Mirror-image enzyme copies looking-glass DNA". Nature. 533 (7603): 303–304. Bibcode:2016Natur.533..303P. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19918. PMID 27193657.
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