Scientists abandon dream of creating ‘mirror life,’ which could turn into a nightmare
Although synthetic biology labs have toyed with the possibility of building mirror bacteria, scientists have opted to ditch the idea because of the potentially catastrophic consequences
In his 1970 novel Spock Must Die!, based on the Star Trek universe, James Blish recounted how a glitch in the Enterprise’s teleporter created a duplicate of the famed Vulcan scientist, indistinguishable from the original to the naked eye but with all of its molecules reversed like a mirror image. To survive, the second Spock was forced to synthesize mirror-image amino acids—building blocks of proteins—because he could not metabolize normal ones.
