{"id":201624,"date":"2024-12-14T13:09:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T19:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/warning-of-unprecedented-risks-scientists-say-mirror-bacteria-should-not-be-created"},"modified":"2024-12-14T13:09:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T19:09:22","slug":"warning-of-unprecedented-risks-scientists-say-mirror-bacteria-should-not-be-created","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/warning-of-unprecedented-risks-scientists-say-mirror-bacteria-should-not-be-created","title":{"rendered":"Warning of \u2018Unprecedented Risks,\u2019 Scientists Say Mirror Bacteria \u2018Should Not Be Created\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/warning-of-unprecedented-risks-scientists-say-mirror-bacteria-should-not-be-created.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo when we\u2019re talking about mirror-image life, it\u2019s kind of like a \u2018what if\u2019 experiment: What if we constructed life with right-handed proteins instead of left-handed proteins? Something that would be very, very similar to natural life, but doesn\u2019t exist in nature. We call this mirror-image life or mirror life,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/healthcare.utah.edu\/newsroom\/news\/2024\/12\/mirror-life-still-hypothetical-heres-why-it-should-probably-stay-way\" target=\"_blank\">explained<\/a> to Michael Kay, a professor of biochemistry at University of Utah\u2019s medical school.<\/p>\n<p>Some scientists like Kay are interested in the medical possibilities of mirror-image therapeutics\u2014which Kay says holds potential for treating chronic illness in a more cost-effective way\u2014but both he and the authors of the recently published commentary are concerned about the potential threats posed by mirror bacteria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur analysis suggests that mirror bacteria could broadly evade many immune defenses of humans, animals, and plants. Chiral interactions, which are central to immune recognition and activation in multicellular organisms, would be impaired with mirror bacteria,\u201d according to the scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cSo when we\u2019re talking about mirror-image life, it\u2019s kind of like a \u2018what if\u2019 experiment: What if we constructed life with right-handed proteins instead of left-handed proteins? Something that would be very, very similar to natural life, but doesn\u2019t exist in nature. We call this mirror-image life or mirror life,\u201d explained to Michael Kay, a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}