#233 – James Smith on how to prevent a mirror life catastrophe
episodePreviously titled “Why I quit everything to work on a biothreat nobody had heard of | James Smith, Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026
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What convinced James Smith to work on mirror bacteria?
Myrobacteria might be able to persist in the environment directly. So they might be able to grow in soil or in oceans. It could be like living on Earth today without an immune system, or even like living on Earth today with an immune system, but where you could catch Ebola from trees or from your pet cat. To cause harm, all a myrobacterium needs to be able to do is grow. How much would it cost to make Mirror Life from where we are today? People estimate something like 500 million to a billion dollars would be sufficient. That motivates the need to have these discussions now. I think at the moment, the marginal impact of an extra person working on Mirror Life is huge. You could probably become the expert in policy around Mirror Life in your country within a few weeks or months.
Today I'm speaking with James Smith. James is the co-director of the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund and an adjunct associate professor at J. Craig Venter Institute. James was also one of the authors of the kind of bombshell science paper that drew attention to the risks of mirror life last December. Thanks for coming on the podcast, James.
It's great to be here.
Why are mirror bacteria considered a significant biothreat?
Thanks for having me.
Okay, so in the science paper, you and your co-authors basically make the argument that we're reasonably close to creating what's called mirror life. And mirror life is basically like normal life, but the molecules are arranged backwards, kind of in the mirror image. And despite the seeming like actually quite a trivial difference, it makes these life forms, which could be bacteria, extremely, extremely dangerous to not just humans, but like most species, including animals and plants. What exactly makes them so dangerous?
Yeah, it might seem like a trivial difference, but actually this is a really fundamental break from normal biology. So ever since the last universal common ancestor, four billion years ago of all life on Earth, all of our DNA has always been made up of right-handed building blocks, meaning that it makes double helix that twists to the right. And mirror bacteria would have the opposite. They'd have DNA that twists to the left. So introducing it to earth would be a bit like introducing an alien invasive species that nothing on earth has evolved to deal with. To take one specific example, our immune systems need to be able to recognize pathogens when they get into the blood to be able to mount an effective response.
How does mirror life affect the human immune system?
The way that it does that is through receptors that you could think of like gloves. Now, putting a right hand into a right-handed glove, it fits well. It activates the immune system. But if you try and put a left hand into a right-handed glove, it doesn't work properly. Mirror life would be a bit like that. A lot of the interactions that are so fundamental to biology are not going to work in the same way.
What risks do mirror bacteria pose to nonhuman animals?
Yeah, I mean, it's wild. It just doesn't seem intuitively like this should matter. It's like it's the same molecule or the same life form. But because there are all of these mechanisms that most of us never think about that actually are like, yeah, the glove has to fit inside, the hand has to fit inside the glove, actually really, really important. Yeah.
Will plants be affected by mirror bacteria?
Is there more we should talk about in terms of what mirror life actually is?
Yeah, mirror life would be a type of artificial life that you'd make in the lab. A mirror bacterium is what we're mostly going to talk about today because that would be the simplest form of life that you'd make. And it would literally have exactly the same components as a normal bacterium. So it would have DNA, proteins, ribosomes, a membrane, but all of those would be made in their mirror image form.
And you think that this problem is kind of on par with some of the most pressing global problems we know of, like AI safety and also kind of other biosecurity threats. Why is this comparable? I think a thing that's surprising is it feels very new. This paper was quite recent. It feels quite surprising that we've discovered a new kind of science that happens to be one of the most threatening things to humanity and, like, the Earth.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What convinced James Smith to work on mirror bacteria?
0:00–1:11
2
Why are mirror bacteria considered a significant biothreat?
1:11–2:42
3
How does mirror life affect the human immune system?
2:42–3:06
4
What risks do mirror bacteria pose to nonhuman animals?
3:06–3:31
5
Will plants be affected by mirror bacteria?
3:31–4:52
6
What impact could mirror bacteria have on ecosystems?
4:52–6:00
7
How close are we to creating mirror bacteria?
6:00–7:22
8
What governance policies are needed for mirror life research?
7:22–2:09:39
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from 80,000 Hours Podcast
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