The Current - ‘Mirror life’ research poses risk to all life on Earth, scientists warn

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Scientists are sounding the alarm about research into synthetic organisms known as “mirror life,” warning of an unprecedented risk to all life on Earth. Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala explains what these mirror molecules are, why researchers wanted to explore them — and why the risks might be too great.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. You know, it sounds like something, maybe an episode of Star Trek. A group of scientists is calling for a halt in research that could lead to something called mirror life. The scientists worry that the synthetic organisms that create these mirror molecules in this field of research could present an unprecedented risk to all life on Earth. That sounds rather serious. Kate Ademala is one of the scientists.

She's a synthetic biologist, founder of the Build a Cell Initiative and genetics professor at the University of Minnesota. She's in Minneapolis. Kate, good morning. Good morning. Let's start with the basics. What do you do? What is a synthetic biologist? Synthetic biologist is someone who makes things out of biology that biology doesn't naturally do. And we do that so we can expand that diversity of what we can get out of biology, better medicine, better drugs, better ways of making molecules, basically making anything that a natural biology didn't think of doing. And so the mRNA vaccine during the COVID pandemic is an example of that, right? Yes, that's one of our poster child examples of a successful synthetic biology project. Okay, so now that we understand that, what is mirror life?

Mirror life is the idea that you could make a cell that looks exactly like a normal bacteria cell, but all molecules in that cell would be pointing the opposite direction. So every biological molecule points one way or the other. It has a physical conformation in space. And there are two possible conformations for every molecule. And life is very particular about what direction all our molecules point. There is one conformation that all life uses, and it's possible to imagine making a cell where all molecules point the exactly opposite direction. That's why we call it mirror life, because it would be like a molecule that looks at itself in a mirror. You told the New York Times this is inherently, incredibly cool, this idea. What is cool about it to you?

It's cool because it would create a second tree of life. All life that exists on earth right now came from the same roots, came from the same tree of life. It's all related. And if we were able to make mirror life, we would be able to literally build or grow a second tree of life. It would be one of the biggest scientific discoveries you can ever think of. It's creating another life form. Why would somebody want to do that? Because we wanted to do that for the same reasons why we don't want to do it right now. So we thought that it would be a great medicine. We thought that because immune system wouldn't freak out about it,

we would be able to make cell-based therapeutics that would not create adverse immune response. And we also could use it for biomanufacturing. We could use it to make molecules with biology in bioreactors that are not susceptible to external contaminations, because we thought that they would be orthogonal to viruses, to predators. And these are exactly the reasons why now we understand we shouldn't be making it, because it wouldn't only be silent to immune system when we want it. It would always be silent to immune system. So it could be a pathogen that we couldn't fight.

And it could also be, if released into the environment, it could just grow. Predators wouldn't care about it. Viruses wouldn't care about it. So it would grow uncontrollably. Because it doesn't exist in the natural world. Yes, and the natural world doesn't know about it because everything in the natural world relies on this concept of molecules pointing the right way. Everything you sense with your molecular sensors, with your receptors on your cells,

has to be of the right conformation, has to point the right way to be detected. And if it's pointing the wrong way, it just won't be detected. So the worst case scenario about this, I mean, it does sound like some sort of doomsday scenario, is that it could end all life on Earth, is that correct? It would take over all life on Earth. It would grow uncontrollably, it would grow over all life on Earth. It would grow uncontrollably. It would grow persistently. And we would have no way of eating it, fighting it in the environment.

So the consequences for the environment could be catastrophic. And that's why we think this should not happen. This should not be made. How unusual is it for scientists to stop themselves, to hammer the brakes on research in this way? Unfortunately, it's very unusual. As far as we know, we're the first group of scientists that were actively working on this huge project that now are saying we should not be doing it. I think this should be happening more. People who do research should also be looking at

safety and security considerations more often. And we're hoping this is a start of something bigger than just this project, that people who do research will start considering more the consequences and perhaps we'll be hearing more about different projects that are being stopped internally from the ground up by people that are actually doing it. How difficult was it for you to get to this place? I mean, scientists will often push for more research. You yourself in that letter that you wrote calling for the halt in this said that life is fascinatingly mysterious. And that in part is why you got into this work. So how difficult was it for you captured, captivated by that mysterious

nature of the work, to suddenly say, you know what, this is actually too dangerous and we can't do this? It was easy once I understood the consequences, but I'm still sad about it. I still think I would love to do it because it's just so inherently fascinating. It would be the biggest scientific discovery I can ever think of. But I also have a self-preservation instinct. I don't want to do it because I understand that this could potentially be catastrophic. What sort of reaction have you had from others in the scientific community for calling for... I mean, it's not just a pause or slowing down this research. You just said the research shouldn't go forward at all. Yes, we believe it shouldn't go forward at all

because there is no way to do it safely. The responses we were getting are mostly positive. People agree with the premise of it, that yes, this should not happen. Some people point out that we're too far away from actually being able to make mirror life, to even make a big deal out of it. There is this concept called information security, is you don't want to talk about

threats because then someone else can bypass your safeguards and go and actually do it because, you know, because they're stupid, because they're evil. Stupid or evil, or that they see that it could be a huge discovery. stupid or evil or that they see that it could be a huge discovery? It could be a huge discovery, but there's no way to do it safely. And that's why, you know, I still believe this would be a huge discovery, but there is no way to do it safely. And I think that should be the priority. We're obviously driven by curiosity, driven by applications.

We want to do the cool things, but we also want to do it safely. That's the main driving force of science is to make people's lives better, not worse. Do you worry about the evil person doing this? If somebody goes rogue, you said this would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. Do you worry that somebody would just go rogue and do it anyway? That's the advantage of us talking about it so early. Right now, the technology is not quite there yet for one person to go and make a mirror cell. This was a very dynamic area of research.

A lot of people were working on it, and we still don't have all the technologies that we need to make a mirror cell. And that's why we chose to speak up right now, because we're hoping that if we stop work right now, we will never get close enough that one rogue actor or even state rogue actor could actually reach it. It needs this huge community effort. And if most of the community agrees not to do it, then a single person who decides to do it for whatever reason is not going to be able to because the technology just is not there. You cannot do it alone. So just finally, what happens now with this idea? I mean, the idea exists in people's mind, but does it just go in some sort of box and you bury it in

the ground and it's never heard from again? I hope we will hear about it because I hope we will have robust discussions about a few things. One is how do we actually make it not happen? So we're already having some of those discussions. How does international law apply to it? How do we make everyone agree to not do it, never touch it again? And also we're having discussions about what we can do because mirror life is a very narrow example. It's just one example of what we can do with those kind of molecules. And there are many different things that we can do that are still safe. We can still get some of those benefits of the drugs and biomanufacturing platforms just without that

living mirror cell. And we're having a lot of discussions about it right now on how do we actually do it? What do we do that is safe? So I hope we'll be hearing about it because it's a cool topic, just not a living mirror cell. This is so interesting, the process of it, but also just kind of wrapping your mind around stopping something rather than proceeding with something.

Kate, thank you very much. Thank you. Kate Ademala is a synthetic biologist and genetics professor at the University of Minnesota. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. My next guest is an ethicist who has weighed in on many biomedical advances over the past few decades. Henry T. Greeley is a Stanford law and ethics

professor, chair of the steering committee, the Center for Biomedical Ethics, and the author of the book, CRISPR People, the Science and Ethics of Editing Humans. He's in Stanford, California. Good morning to you. Good morning. What do you make of this, this call by scientists not to pause, not to slow down research, but to completely stop and outlaw the research that could lead to the creation of mirror life. So I think the call is an excellent thing. I'm very much in support of it. I would note it is fairly narrow. As Kate said near the end of her interview, it's to not make a living cell using this approach.

They do call for continued research with mirror molecules, and they do leave open the possibility that there may be evidence that this isn't as unsafe as it currently appears to be. But I think this is a really responsible thing. I will note, though, that it is not the first time that scientists have done this. I was going to ask, I mean, part of the intrigue around this is, sure, the mirror cells, but it's also the fact that scientists themselves are saying, this is too dangerous for all of us. We need to nip this in the bud.

When has this happened before? This coming February will be the 50th anniversary of the Asilomar meeting on recombinant DNA. This was a meeting called by scientists who were working on the very first ways to move DNA from one organism to another. They were able to do that successfully. And then they got worried. What happens if we move something into a bacterium, into an E. coli, and it turns out to be dangerous and it gets out and it hurts people? they held a big meeting at a conference center in Monterey, California called the SILOMAR,

where they said, you know, we shouldn't do this unless or until we discover we're confident that it can be done safely. That led ultimately the moratorium held. It led ultimately to some regulations, both in the United States and around the world. And the tool has been used for the last 45, 50 years. But there was that pause while people stopped to say, is this going to be safe or not? That's, I think, the most famous example. There's another more recent example that's a little less successful. Jennifer Doudna, the UC Berkeley scientist who was one of the people who led to the discovery of CRISPR, a method for editing DNA, back in early 2015, called a small meeting to talk about the possible consequences of using it to edit human genomes, edit human DNA. That meeting led to an article in Science, which led to an

initiative by the American National Academies of Science and the Royal Society of Britain, which led to a bunch of different international organizations opining on whether and how this should be done. There was a consensus that it shouldn't be done. That really arose from Doudna herself's starting point to say, I'm worried about what this could be used for. The bad news is a rogue scientist did go ahead and do it. A Chinese scientist named He Zhanghui announced in November of 2018 that two babies had been born whose embryos he had edited. Now, I think he expected to be a hero. Instead, he was viewed as a villain. The Chinese government sentenced him to three years in prison. Many countries have outlawed this, and no one has done it since then. But there is the possibility of rogues going ahead. Probably not in this case for the reasons Kate pointed out.

This is too hard, too complicated, too many moving parts, too much money involved. So this one I'm less worried about, but there are areas where even a consensus of scientists can't necessarily stop research from happening. How do you go about regulating that? I mean, whether it's self-regulation or international organizations to oversee this, to say this is what we have decided is in the best interest of all of us. Yeah, that's really hard. At the national level, you can do it, or the regional level, like the European Union. Internationally, international law is very slow. Treaties are very hard to get, and it's very hard to get clear treaties that are well enforced. Look at something like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Big deal.

That hasn't worked perfectly. I think efforts by groups of scientists, by scientific organizations like national academies, the Canadian Academy, and among others, can help set guidelines that will create a culture that will say, do this, don't this, don't do this. Funding agencies should be involved. Journals, high-imp funding agencies should be involved, journals, high impact journals should be involved in saying, we're not going to publish this. Even in the face of remarkable temptation, again, if you go back to the CRISPR story, he did think he was going to be seen as a hero. I mean, he was portrayed as a villain, but he thought he was going to, that he would be hailed as somebody who had had this remarkable breakthrough. That has to be incredibly tempting. I think he still believes that. I think he still believes that.

I think he sees himself as Galileo who will be vindicated in the future. He's wrong. But the temptation will be strong. But remember, there are not that many, there are going to be that many cases where a single rogue can do that. And I think this particular area of mirror life

is one where the single rogue actor is not going to be able to do very much. Do you see this as part of a story of unintended consequences in some ways, that we create something and we don't think of the long tail of it? So I think this is the good side of that story. I think this is the story of we start to create something, but then we do start thinking about the long tail and we decide, you know, we really shouldn't do this. If you think back over the last hundred and some odd years, probably the biggest change in our world has been made by the automobile. It's changed everything about how we live. It's changed our air.

It's changing our climate. But nobody stopped 120 years ago and said, huh, this Model T, what's this going to do to us? Today, we are, I think, more sensitive to that. Are we perfectly sensitive to it? No. Are we perfectly able to predict the future? Certainly not. But we're paying more attention. I think that's a great thing. This is a good news story in some ways, then. I think so. Yeah. This is really, really interesting. I'm glad to have the chance to talk to you about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Henry T. Greeley is a Stanford Law Professor, Director of the Center for Law and Bioscience, also Chair of the Steering Committee of the Center for Biomedical Ethics. He was in Stanford,

California. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.