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Interesting that this is led by the same Dr. Kate Adamala who ended the right-handed-proteins experiment a couple of years ago. Given how close she was I'm not
by burnte 3mo ago
Interesting that this is led by the same Dr. Kate Adamala who ended the right-handed-proteins experiment a couple of years ago. Given how close she was I'm not surprised she's made this work.
- dnautics 3mo agothe left handed life thing is the only thing that makes me wonder about Adamala's judgement... there zero plausible mechanism for left handed life to succesfully compete. in case you didn't know, your immune system WILL detect left handed pathogens, possibly more aggressively, and two of the body's mechanisms for fighting infection -- fever and ozonolysis -- are distinctly achiral Arguably we should push for mirror life for industrial purposes FASTER because biocontrol is easier (they got nothing to eat) and lab escape is far less likely
- gus_massa 3mo agoI agree. Nitpicking: > (they got nothing to eat) They can eat fats, that are not chiral. Perhaps they can eat some carbohidrates, all carbohidrates are chiral, but some bacterias may eat some of the unusual carbohidrates too. But amino acids are beyond any possibility, and fixating nitrogen is hard, so I also think they will starve to death very fast.
- dnautics 3mo agoIt's generally possible to epimerize l-amino acids to d- (or functionalize glycine) but you're competing with nonmirror life at that point. plus bacteria will love love love the d-alanine you make
- gus_massa 3mo agoThanks for the correction. What about the peptide bound? Can normal bacteria break mirror-proteins?
- scarmig 3mo agoBack then, it sounded like making right-handed life was decades away. But with this work, couldn't you just as easily make this kind of synthetic cell right-handed?
- burnte 3mo agoAFAIK she was saying we were years not decades away which is what made her nervous. We were very close and the risks hadn't been fully explored.