Mirror cells could threaten life on Earth. Why are we building them?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Fifty years ago, Congress set out to protect coal miners from black lung disease. Today, it's back at rates not seen in half a century.
These guys are being treated like disposable widgets, not human beings.
On the Sunday story, why coal miners in Appalachia are getting sicker faster. Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First Podcast on the NPR app.
You're listening to Shortwave. From NPR.
Hey everyone, Regina Barber here with another installment of our summer series Tech Camp. And it's just for you, because it's Monday. And every Monday through mid-August, we're dropping episodes about the frontiers of tech, tracking down the breakthroughs, experiments, and innovations that could change everything. Today that means checking out cells. And I don't mean the ones that make up you, me, or every living thing you see. Nope, it's something different. That gets two very different reactions from scientists. That it's either the future of biology or Possibly the end of life as we know it. Okay, let me back up. So I'm right-handed, not everyone is. My whole life I've heard the woes of my left-handed friends, that the world is just not made for them.
And working on this story, I learned about a whole new level to that. Handedness affects the very building blocks of life. All of life on earth picks a side.
The building blocks for our DNA. Uh they're all right handed.
What is chirality and why does all Earth’s DNA twist to the right?
They could be left handed. But they're not. Ah, and that's just a rule across all of life.
That's Carl Zimmer. He's an author of many books on science and a reporter for the New York Times.
I'd say my beat is life, basically what it is and what it could become.
This handedness of molecules and life is called chirality. It's the mirror image of a molecule. Like how your face is flipped in the mirror. On Earth, all the DNA we see, aside from some transient exceptions, all the helixes turn to the right. And so far scientists haven't seen any evidence that life is ambidextrous either. But in the last decade, researchers have been getting closer and closer to understanding how life can be on the other side of that mirror by creating mirror molecules. Like in pharmaceutical drugs, some of which are even in clinical trials. Since enzymes in the body didn't evolve to recognize mirror molecules, the thought is that these drugs last longer. But Carl says manufacturing these molecules can be a painstaking process.
Like, say a scientist hypothetically wanted to manufacture mirror insulin in the hope it lasts longer.
Now if you want to make mirror insulin, there's no cellular factory around that you can use to m to make those molecules. You have to make them by hand basically.
Unless you make a mere cell. That cell could make those mirror molecules. And he says seeing a mirror cell, a form of mirror life, would just be cool.
I mean, no one has ever seen a mirror cell ever. As far as biologists can Tell me. The chemistry should all work in the mirror. But we don't know that.
Right now, scientists can't even make a regular cell from scratch, much less a mirror cell. But many scientists do see a path to mirror cells, even though it's likely a decade away at the earliest.
At this point, it's it's not just science fiction.
And that worries some scientists. So much so that dozens of biologists published a 299-page technical report on the feasibility and risks of creating mirror cells, claiming that this kind of research could potentially lead to devastating consequences for life on Earth.
They could potentially create a kind of a pandemic that's almost Like science fiction. It would. potentially be a total catastrophe, not just for humans but for maybe all animals and maybe all plants and maybe all ecosystems.
So today on the show, how mirror cells could threaten life on Earth, what it would take to actually make one, and what it means for a scientific community to call for a stop on a technology before it's ever made. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:43
2
What is chirality and why does all Earth’s DNA twist to the right?
1:43–10:17
3
How did scientists discover mirror molecules and what are they used for?
10:17–15:59
4
Why are biologists warning that mirror cells could trigger a global pandemic?
15:59–16:12