Synthesis of mirror-chiral version of organism – incompatible with our pathogens
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Some potential applications:
- mass production in e.g. chiral E. Coli of enantiomers of our proteins, opening new world of possibilities e.g. for drugs,
- designing and creating bottom-up really sterile ecosystems, what might be essential e.g. for bringing life to harsh environments like Mars – pathogens greatly decrease efficiency of ecosystems and it seems impossible to really get rid of them in standard way,
- finally to create chiral humans – immune to nearly all diseases.
As it seems synthesizing some mirror-chiral organism is a matter of time, for example just because we can, let us try to prepare: discuss, understand its possibilities, consequences ... and dangers.
Personally, my answer is that the mix of both is statistically unstable (repelling): the more one type of life, the more material the next generation of this type of life has - leading to total domination of initially randomly chosen one of them (spontaneous symmetry breaking).
However, we are currently closing to being technologically able to artificially synthesize the second (mirror) type of life - this is a huge topic we should well understand before somebody eventually will just do it ...