In the coming decades, we might figure out how to make an entirely new kind of life: a mirror cell, in which every molecule is the mirror image of those found in normal cells. Such reversed cells have probably never existed on our planet in its 4.5-billion-year history. Yet we could one day make them – perhaps as a way to make new drugs, or simply out of pure scientific curiosity about the origins and evolution of life.
But should we? According to a coalition of synthetic biologists and biosafety specialists, the answer is a resounding “no”. Mirror life, they…
