The journal Science has published a paper authored by an international group of leading scientists sounding the alarm on current efforts to create something called "mirror life." Link to an abstract of the paper is here.
"All known life is homochiral. DNA and RNA are made from "right-handed" nucleotides, and proteins are made from "left-handed" amino acids. Driven by curiosity and plausible applications, some researchers had begun work toward creating lifeforms composed entirely of mirror-image biological molecules. Such mirror organisms would constitute a radical departure from known life, and their creation warrants careful consideration."
The paper notes that no one is currently very close to creating mirror life, but with major investments and technological bioengineering advances, the capability to do so could be ten years away.
Various safeguards keeping mirror bacteria in the lab may not be foolproof, and the risk of any escape or leak could be catastrophic. Existing life on Earth would have no defense against mirror bacteria infection, and mirror bacteria would have no natural inhibitors to its spread. The following is written in measured scientific parlance, but it paints a devastating picture:
"Our analysis suggests that mirror bacteria would likely evade many immune mechanisms mediated by chiral molecules, potentially causing lethal infection in humans, animals, and plants. They are likely to evade predation from natural-chirality phage and many other predators, facilitating spread in the environment. We cannot rule out a scenario in which a mirror bacterium acts as an invasive species across many ecosystems, causing pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of plant and animal species, including humans. Even a mirror bacterium with a narrower host range and the ability to invade only a limited set of ecosystems could still cause unprecedented and irreversible harm."
An article in The Guardian quotes Prof. Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh: "The threat we're talking about is unprecedented. Mirror bacteria would likely evade many human, animal and plant immune system responses and in each case would cause lethal infections that would spread without check."
The paper's authors suggest a ban on any research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria, and recommend research to better understand the risks.
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll bleakly mused on Bluesky that these kinds of risks that technologically advanced civilizations face may be the reason we haven't detected evidence of alien civilizations.
