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Cake day: October 21st, 2024

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  • Do you assume these scientists are fearful anti-intellectuals, like a gaggle of Covidiots or something? If you read the article, you’ll find that

    The expert group includes Dr Craig Venter, the US scientist who led the private effort to sequence the human genome in the 1990s, and the Nobel laureates Prof Greg Winter at the University of Cambridge and Prof Jack Szostak at the University of Chicago.

    These aren’t idiots, and their call came from a risk assessment performed by experts in their fields.

    While enthusiastic about research on mirror molecules, the report sees substantial risks in mirror microbes and calls for a global debate on the work. link to the 299-page report

    Beyond causing lethal infections, the researchers doubt the microbes could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and predators.

    Dr Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota and co-author on the report, was working towards a mirror cell but changed tack last year after studying the risks in detail.

    “We should not be making mirror life,” she said. “We have time for the conversation. And that’s what we were trying to do with this paper, to start a global conversation.”