Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks | Stanford Digital Repository
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Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks
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Abstract/Contents
Abstract<br>This report describes the technical feasibility of creating mirror bacteria and the potentially serious and wide-ranging risks that they could pose to humans, other animals, plants, and the environment. It accompanies the Science Policy Forum article titled “Confronting risks of mirror life”, published December 12, 2024.<br>In a mirror bacterium, all of the chiral molecules of existing bacteria—proteins, nucleic acids, and metabolites—are replaced by their mirror images. Mirror bacteria could not evolve from existing life, but their creation will become increasingly feasible as science advances. Interactions between organisms often depend on chirality, and so interactions between natural organisms and mirror bacteria would be profoundly different from those between natural organisms. Most importantly, immune defenses and predation typically rely on interactions between chiral molecules that could often fail to detect or kill mirror bacteria due to their reversed chirality. It therefore appears plausible, even likely, that sufficiently robust mirror bacteria could spread through the environment unchecked by natural biological controls and act as dangerous opportunistic pathogens in an unprecedentedly wide range of other multicellular organisms, including humans.<br>This report draws on expertise from synthetic biology, immunology, ecology, and related fields to provide the first comprehensive assessment of the risks from mirror bacteria. It consists of eight chapters and starts with a general introduction, followed by an examination of the initial creation of mirror bacteria, their further engineering, as well as biosecurity and biosafety implications. The remaining five chapters cover risks to human health, medical countermeasures, risks to other animals, risks to plants, and the potential ecological consequences of their introduction into the environment.
Description
Resource Type
text
Publication date
December 3, 2024; December 12, 2024
Creators/Contributors
Author
Adamala, Katarzyna
Author
Agashe, Deepa
Author
Binder, Damon
Author
Cai, Yizhi
Author
Cooper, Vaughn
Author
Duncombe, Ryan
Author
Esvelt, Kevin
Author
Glass, John
Author
Hand, Timothy
Author
Inglesby, Thomas
Author
Isaacs, Farren
Author
Jones, Jonathan
Author
Lenski, Richard
Author
Lewis, Gregory
Author
Medzhitov, Ruslan
Author
Nicotra, Matthew
Author
Oehm, Sebastian
Author
Pannu, Jaspreet
Author
Relman, David
Author
Suga, Hiroaki
Author
Sweere, Johanna
Author
Szostak, Jack
Author
Talbot, Nicholas
Author
Wang, Brian
Subjects
Subject
Biosecurity
Subject
Mirror life
Subject
Synthetic biology
Subject
Immunology
Subject
Microbial ecology
Subject
Microbiology
Genre
Text (Technical report)
Bibliographic information
Related item
Title
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158
Title
Related item
Preferred citation
K. P. Adamala et al., Science 10.1126/science.ads9158 (2024).
DOI
https://doi.org/10.25740/cv716pj4036
Location
https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036
Access conditions
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License<br>This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA).
Preferred citation
Preferred citation<br>Adamala et al. Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks. December 2024. https://doi.org/10.25740/cv716pj4036
Collection
Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks
Versions
Version 2<br>Jul 7, 2025
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Version 1<br>Dec 11, 2024
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https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036
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