940: Biologists Call For A Halt To ‘Mirror Life’ Research
You’re probably familiar with the concept of handedness—a glove made for your left hand looks basically like the one for your right hand, but won’t fit—it’s a mirror image. Many of life’s important molecules, including proteins and DNA, are chiral, meaning they can exist in either a left-handed or a right-handed form. But on Earth, nature only uses one version or the other in living organisms. Your proteins, for example, are all the left-handed version, while your DNA is all right-handed.With advances in synthetic biology, it could be possible to build an artificial organism that flips that…
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