We just need to make mirror people that live in the mirror microbe side of the world

Meh, we get a new one of those every year now. They'll have to try harder to impress me.

Fuck, again?

I know I just responded, but I read the article, and the drug page, and discovered the thing we're talking about. Racemic organic molecules are not the same thing here.

These are specifically proteins used for cellular life. These are significantly more complex, as there are no natural bindings between the two. To note this from Wikipedia:

Examples include thalidomide, ibuprofen, cetirizine and salbutamol. A well known drug that has different effects depending on its ratio of enantiomers is amphetamine. Adderall is an unequal mixture of both amphetamine enantiomers. A single Adderall dose combines the neutral sulfate salts of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, with the dextro isomer of amphetamine saccharate and D/L-amphetamine aspartate monohydrate. The original Benzedrine was a racemic mixture, and isolated dextroamphetamine was later introduced to the market as Dexedrine. The prescription analgesic tramadol is also a racemate.

We know that those drugs aren't great in pregnancy, but Adderall specifically does not cause birth defects. Again, these molecules are significantly less complex than any protein they would talk about here.

I don't see any mention in there of Thalidomide being a mirror molecule, do you have a source for that?

I don't think viruses are the major concern here, viruses need to be compatible with our cells and DNA or RNA. It's bacteria and other simplistic life forms that could infect our body and be largely invisible to our immune system.

Yeah, this should probably be approached from the angle of "someone might do this, so we should do research to be prepared".

Research ways to improve containment to reduce the chance of an accidental containment breach.

And research ways to quickly determine the weaknesses of such synthetic lifeforms if a breach happens anyways. Also to be prepared in case someone deliberately weaponizes it.

By the way, this kind of thing is why IMO if we ever do find extra terrestrial life, attempting to make any kind of physical contact or even land on the planet might end up dooming both our own species (and maybe all current complex life on Earth) as well as any complex life on that other planet. They could have basic forms of life that are entirely different from our own and completely invisible to our immune systems.

Though it would probably also have cool results in a few hundred million years, after microbial life has evolved defenses and perhaps some hybridizations.

Like when the UN banned buying uranium from apartheid south Africa mines but everyone kept buying anyway

Not to nit but we absolutely do not know the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Not that prions are good or anything.

As always, some people see Jurassic Park as inspiration and wonder why nobody gave Hammond a chance.

The rest of us know that Dr. Malcolm was right from the start.

Prions aren't a chirality issue, they're a folding issue

Prions are comprised of right-handed amino acids. I don't think it's the same thing to flip the chirality of a molecule as to flip the chirality of its subcomponents. DNA is usually right-handed, but there are left-handed forms created naturally. They don't suddenly annihilate their counterparts in antimatter-like collisions.

There are natural pharmaceuticals that consist of both chiralities, and obviously plenty of synthetic ones.

It's really not that simple. If we want to think about it longer, fine by me. But what is the real threat level?

Edit: As others have pointed out, prions also aren't an example of a different chirality of the native protein. The issue with prions is they can convert the native protein to their form, which "reproduces" themselves to make the disease progress. Mirrored organisms will propagate the chirality of their components, but their components don't inherently convert their enantiomers once that organism is dead.

Yea, I'd definitely trust us with that... we could probably get one of our highly trust worthy billionaires to run it.

Maybe we could equip this moon base equipped with civilization ending microbes with a giant laser just in case sending the bio weapon back to earth seems too expensive to the board members?

I've been out of synthetic bio for damn near two decades now, and an undergrad when was I even in it, but I'm not so sure. PCR didn't come around until 85. I had professors that used to do every cycle manually. Human genome project wrapped in 03(?). You can order custom oligos for like $0.13USD a base pair mail order now. You type it in on a webform, a machine creates a custom molecule for you, and if you want to pay a little extra you can have it over-night. I suppose it depends what you call "near future", and synthetic biology has always had moving goal posts when it came to "functional liposome" and "synthetic life", but I don't know... shit can move fast sometimes.

Because apparently the only way to get rid of it is extreme incineration.

This isn't viral or bacterial, where just a little bit of heat, UV or decay will kill it.

When someone dies of prion disease, they need to incinerate everything. Clothes/Body/Beds, the whole thing.

These are nightmare fuel.