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.
the 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
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.
It'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
Back 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?
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
> (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.