*Monday's issue of the Journal Nature contained this article: *
*How should ‘mirror life’ research be restricted? <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02902-2?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=b2c87a0562-nature-briefing-daily-20250916&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-50169436>* *The article doesn't mention the enormous increase in intelligence we've seen in AIs over the last couple of years but I think it adds more urgency to the question. And I thought the following quotation was especially interesting: * *"Over the past decade, molecular biologist Ting Zhu at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China, has been constructing systems to ease the production of large mirror-image biomolecules. He started with mirror-image polymerases — enzymes that can copy mirror-image DNA and transfer that genetic information into mirror-image RNA. In 2022, he used that approach to make key building blocks of a simplified mirror-image ribosome, the complex cellular machinery that translates genetic information to build proteins. A mirror-image ribosome, Zhu says, “could dramatically accelerate pharmaceutical discovery by enabling high-throughput production of mirror-image peptides”.* *"Zhu, who cannot attend the Manchester meeting, says he has never wanted to create a mirror-image cell, and adds that he’s still many years away from even making a functional mirror-image ribosome. There are some who think his work on the mirror-image ribosome could pose a threat, however. John Glass, a synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California says “It is my view that achieving construction of a mirror ribosome is probably the hardest part of the process of making a living mirror cell” . So, is he calling on Zhu to halt his work on the mirror-image ribosome? After a long pause, Glass answers: “Maybe. I think it shouldn’t be made.”"* *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 5e0 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1gjBTUOpvO5VDAKQcyF%3DeuMuu9Y2ZqjZiSYrs%2Ban86fw%40mail.gmail.com.
