Mirror cells: an ethical reflection on high-risk research is launched

To discuss the threat that the synthesis of mirror cells would pose to life on Earth, at a symposium held on June 12 and 13, the Pasteur Institute in Paris was the ideal venue. Wasn't it Louis Pasteur who, in 1848, discovered that certain molecules, such as wine tartrate, can exist in two spatial configurations, identical except that they represent a mirror image of each other? This is chirality, in reference to the Greek word "kheir," which means "hand," each of which is superimposable on the other, seen in a mirror.

It turns out that life as we know it evolved on only one side of the looking glass. What if we produced a bacterium whose entire cellular machinery was the mirror version of, say, Escherichia coli ? “At a 2019 US National Science Foundation workshop of 80 synthetic biologists to brainstorm innovative projects, not one of us objected when we said it would be a great idea to create a mirror-image life form,” recalls John Glass of the John Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in La Jolla, California. A pioneer in the synthesis of minimal life forms, he was in the starting blocks to embark on this path.

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