Synthetic “mirror life”, if created, could pose an existential threat to life on Earth

Joe Zadeh at Noema:

A group of 38 prominent scientists from around the world — including 16 members of national academies and two Nobel Laureates — called for a halt on the creation of of a novel synthetic bacteria that, if realized and accidentally leaked into the environment, could dodge typical ecological checks and lead to an uncontrollable spread of deadly infection that posed a threat not just to humans but to many forms of life upon our earth and in our oceans, from the animal to the vegetal, from the micro to the macro. They provided a robust 299-page technical report to legitimize their worries.

The organism of concern is an artificially created mirror-image form of bacteria, known popularly as mirror life.

More here.

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