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Immunity by Incompatibility — Chiral (Mirror Image) Humans

infection chiral immunity mirror-image

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#1 Hip

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Posted 09 September 2012 - 04:08 PM


Immunity by Incompatibility — Chiral Humans

By Jarek Duda, PhD

A fascinating cellular engineering concept to ensure perfect infection-free life

Arthur C. Clarke writes about a molecular mirror-image human being starving to death because his body cannot process normal sugars (see “Technical Error” in Clarke's book "The Collected Stories").

Jarek Duda takes this idea further, and shows us how we can prevent virtually ANY microbe (virus, bacterium, fungus, protozoan, etc) from infecting us — by constructing mirror-image (chiral) human beings which will be totally incompatible to these microbes!

Reconstructing ourselves in chiral form, using the mirror-image reflection of our cellular components is achieved by replacing left-handed amino acids with right-handed ones, in order to create mirror reflections of all human proteins.

Analogically, we could get chiral sugars, DNA, etc, on which reflected enzymes would work perfectly. Finally we would get a normally functioning molecular mirror reflection of a natural organism – a chiral counterpart organism – with which natural viruses and bacteria couldn’t interact. Electromagnetic force (chemistry) is unchanged under such molecular reflection transformation (P-symmetry). There is a small alteration of weak interactions under reflection, which can produce very small corrections, but these corrections are many orders of magnitude lower than thermal noise – almost certainly too tiny to alter any biochemistry.

Life on Earth only uses left-handed amino acids. All of biology has this homochirality. Chiral (right-handed) amino acids do not exist in nature, so any such chiral organism would be entering completely virgin territory, biologically speaking.

Such a chiral organism would obviously need to be feed with chiral food, produced by chiral plants. The great advantage, though, is that such chiral organisms would enjoy a disease-free life, completely immune to all viruses and microbes. And we would eliminate plagues and epidemics.

Viruses would be completely incompatible with the reflected human cellular structures; and bacteria, protozoa and fungi could not function because they would not be able to find normal sugars inside reflected organisms. The reverse sugars circulating in the chiral human body would be indigestible as far as normal bacteria are concerned, so any bacterium entering a chiral human would simply starve to death. The chiral environment is absolutely hostile for normal viruses, protozoa, bacteria, etc.

In order to infect a chiral human, existing bacteria would have to evolve their own mirror image structure from scratch. This is extremely unlikely to happen (since DNA holds the genes, the alphabet of evolution, but DNA itself is a priori to genes, and therefore more or less untouched by the process of evolution). Terrorist acts, however, are a concern. In the case of sabotage, we would have to control the spread of any terrorist-engineered chiral virus using the anti-terrorist and anti-biowarfare measures that we already have in place today.

How do we create a chiral organism, such as a reflected human? The synthesis of every molecule, a reflected zygote is difficult, because we don’t have chiral enzymes. But the real problem is creating the correct structure of membranes with specific concentrations. Nevertheless, with advancing nano-engineering, this could be possible in say 50 years, when we could slowly transform our ecosystems, starting from the bacterium E. coli, which will act as our factory, and later plants. Finally, if all goes well, the human being.

But in such a sterile environment, would we have perfect health? Perhaps the stresses created by small infections can, like small amounts of radiation, have positive long-term influence? For example, infection helps to get rid of damaged and weak cells in an organism. And the hygiene hypothesis states that the actual absence of exposure to microbes can lead to autoimmune diseases (although more probably, autoimmune diseases are due to chronic underlying infection from viruses and bacteria that have insinuated themselves deeply inside a living organism and its cells, rather than the lack of exposure to microbes; so we might in this way eliminate autoimmune conditions as well once humans move into chiral life).

We would also need to be careful about human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). These are virus gene coding sequences that exist within the human genome (they originate from ancient infections), which theoretically can come to life as a virus. HERVs are best eliminated from our genome before we switch to chiral form, otherwise if these ancient viruses come to life in chiral form, they could evolve and mutate into new retroviruses viruses that could infect chiral human being society. We want create chiral life completely and totally free of chiral viruses, or any other chiral microorganism.

There are other dangers too: imagine a reflected unicellular organism, which needs only light and symmetric molecules like H2O, CO2, O2. Such a chiral unicellular organism could spread, evolve, and could even overthrow plant life.

So the main rule from the beginning should be: in the case of chlorophyll organisms: only plants whose population can be controlled should be transformed!

Transformation of our ecosystem would be expensive, but in the future we may need to create completely new ecosystems for populating other planets like Mars. In these situations, the effectiveness of such an ecosystem will be very important. We would need many kinds of microorganisms. Symbiotic ones wouldn’t need to have aggressive mechanisms; aggressive microbes would only re-emerge if they evolved from zero. I cannot imagine that chiral viruses would be needed; they wouldn’t be transformed at all. Thus chiral viruses would just re-appear if they evolved from zero, like free DNA, which is unlikely. Furthermore, the last time this happened, the viruses evolved in parallel with their targets; now organisms have very advanced specific and non-specific defensive systems, which will make it hard for any chiral virus to appear and establish itself in a chiral ecosystem.

Of course, once our ecosystem is transformed, if in the distant future, we find a new major problem, we can always reverse again!

Another option, which is much easier, is to just switch humans to chiral form, leaving the rest of the ecosystem untouched. In the near future, it is likely that we will bio-engineer some of our food, so we could just bio-engineer our own factory-made chiral foods, without needing to introduce chiral plants for our crops, or chiral animals for our meat.

This chiral humans-only approach would be much easier and safer than converting the whole ecosystem to chiral form, and we could then enjoy all of nature in its pure and natural form, without ever having to worry about parasites or infections, which we will have jumped beyond forever.


Links:

http://www.sciencefo...in-chiral-life/
http://www.gregbear....play.cfm?id=982

Edited by Hip, 09 September 2012 - 04:10 PM.

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#2 Hip

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Posted 11 September 2012 - 09:31 PM

I should in fact provide some basic context and rationale for this chiral human idea:

More and more research is discovering links between common diseases and microbes. We are talking here about common diseases like Alzheimer's, ADHD, autism, cancers, anxiety disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, heart diseases, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and hundreds of others, all of which have been linked to common microbial infections within the body — common pathogens like herpes simplex, Streptococcus, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, coxsackievirus B, HHV-6, etc.

In this context, you begin to see the everyday pathogens that live in our body as bringers of disease.

The idea of chiral humans is not just to eliminate classic infectious disease agents like HIV or West Nile virus, but to eliminate all pathogens in the body, in order to offer the possibility of living a completely disease-free life (or at least free of all the pathogen-driven chronic diseases).

Genetic diseases could hopefully be eliminated as well, by removing bad genes; and environmental toxin driven diseases can be eliminated by stricter laws and controls on pollution.

Once well have eliminated these 3 disease-causing agents: pathogens, bad genes and environmental toxins, we will most likely find that the vast majority of individuals with live very healthy, lengthy and completely disease-free lives.

Edited by Hip, 11 September 2012 - 09:35 PM.


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#3 blurred

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Posted 29 September 2012 - 02:13 AM

Interesting concept - after synthesizing basic enzymes in chiral form, we could use them to make chiral version of known genetic material, which then could be used to recreate the rest of required molecules. The real problem would be making the whole machinery start working - create living cell, for example by slowly replacing material of its standard analogue. It will be really large project, but since artificial cell was already created two years ago by Creig Venture Institute, chiral one is a matter of a few decades, for example just because we can.

Practical applications start with chiral versions of all enzymes we know - bioreactors, medicine, etc. would get huge amount of new possibilities to explore.
Recreating bottom-up sterile ecosystem (having only wanted organisms) as you mentioned would be also interesting possibility.
However, the idea of chiral humans you focus on has many additional problems - for example probably many our substances would be poisonous for them (and oppositely), so it could be very difficult to mix us with such artificially produced incompatible (but looking the same) humans.

How would you imagine evolution of situation when such technology will became reality?

Edited by blurred, 29 September 2012 - 02:14 AM.


#4 Hip

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Posted 29 September 2012 - 04:41 PM

However, the idea of chiral humans you focus on has many additional problems - for example probably many our substances would be poisonous for them (and oppositely), so it could be very difficult to mix us with such artificially produced incompatible (but looking the same) humans.


I am not the originator of this chiral humans idea (this concept was originally devised by Jarek Duda), but I will have a go at answering this question.

It is true that right-hand versions of biological left-hand molecules can sometimes be toxic, or occasionally have a different biological activity to the left-hand version of the molecule. For example, in the case of the regular amino acid L-proline, which is a normal part of our diet, its right-hand counterpart, D-proline, has some mild neurotoxic properties.

Though often right-hand versions of biological molecules are just inert, having no biological actively at all, so they are safe.

In any case, D-humans would be able to live alongside regular L-humans without any problems. But obviously a D-human could not donate blood to an L-human, and vice versa.

Edited by Hip, 29 September 2012 - 04:43 PM.


#5 Hip

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Posted 29 September 2012 - 04:56 PM

D-humans would also be an excellent choice for the staff in infectious disease units in hospitals:

No matter what infectious disease an L-human had caught — even smallpox or Ebola, for example — any D-human nurse or doctor looking after them would be completely immune to these infectious microbes.

Edited by Hip, 29 September 2012 - 05:00 PM.


#6 blurred

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Posted 29 September 2012 - 05:20 PM

I think the inability of being a blood donor is one of the smallest problems - the amount of possible conflicts while mixing such populations seems unimaginable, like are enantiomers of our pheromones neutral?
Extremely important are also social issues: how to treat them? who should be the donors? ... not having a really complete social acceptance would probably mean that terrorists would create chiral viruses, what is much simpler than for living cell - how to prevent it?
While viruses wouldn't rather be able to adapt themselves to such chiral environment (but relatively simply could be helped), maybe bacterias could adapt themselves to consume L-sugars? ... I've just found "Bacterial Utilization of L-sugars and D-amino Acids" article ...

However, this idea is definitely worth considering, especially because the trend of creating synthetic life will rather grow - after recent artificially creating a cell, chiral cell should become one of the most important milestones - the aim to reach.
To understand - prepare better for such eventuality, maybe let us try to speculate a bit - how do you think it would affect our world? How the situation would evolve?
And definitely it is an interesting concept for a SF movie ;)

#7 Hip

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Posted 30 September 2012 - 06:12 PM

[Chiral humans] not having a really complete social acceptance would probably mean that terrorists would create chiral viruses, what is much simpler than for living cell - how to prevent it?


You make some very good points.

I think social acceptance of chiral humans would arise quickly, once it was realized that the first generation of chiral humans were exactly the same both physically and mentally as regular humans, the only difference being that chiral humans had largely diseases-free lives (and thus long lifespans), because they never developed the common diseases that afflict regular humans (diseases like Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, or mental symptoms/conditions like anxiety disorders, clinical depression, bipolar, autism, etc, all of which have been linked to microbes). Chiral humans would be very healthy people.

Having a disease-free long life is the primary reason that humans would want to switch to chiral form. There may be a bit of envy from the disease-prone regular humans towards the largely disease-free chiral humans. But nevertheless, it is likely that parents may choose to have their children switched to chiral form, just after conception, so as to offer their children a disease-free, long life.

The problem of terrorist-created viruses is a general one: this possibility equally applies to regular humans as it does to chiral humans. So bioterrorism is not specific to chiral humans.


While viruses wouldn't rather be able to adapt themselves to such chiral environment (but relatively simply could be helped), maybe bacterias could adapt themselves to consume L-sugars? ... I've just found "Bacterial Utilization of L-sugars and D-amino Acids" article ...



The paper on Bacterial Utilization of L-sugars and D-amino Acids is very interesting. As you say, since this study found that some bacteria seem capable of using reverse amino acids and reverse sugars indicates that bacteria might eventually (over hundreds or possibly thousands of years) evolve and adapt to living within the bodies of chiral humans.

Though these chiral human-adapted bacteria would still have regular genomes, not chiral genomes, so perhaps it would be possible to develop potent antibiotics (for use within chiral humans only) that eradicate all cells and microorganisms containing regular genomes, but leaving chiral genome cells completely intact. That should deal with any regular bacteria trying to adapt to living in chiral humans.

And it would appear impossible for a chiral virus to evolve from scratch, because a chiral virus would require a chiral DNA or RNA viral genome to begin with, which just do not exist.

Edited by Hip, 30 September 2012 - 06:16 PM.


#8 blurred

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Posted 30 September 2012 - 07:02 PM

Having a disease-free long life is the primary reason that humans would want to switch to chiral form. There may be a bit of envy from the disease-prone regular humans towards the largely disease-free chiral humans. But nevertheless, it is likely that parents may choose to have their children switched to chiral form, just after conception, so as to offer their children a disease-free, long life.

From perspective of a person, it would be not exactly a switch he can make - the most egocentric act one would be able to perform is rather to make own chiral (genetic) clone.
It suggests the rich will want to have such clones, or of fresh zygotes to have chiral kids.
As the project will be quite costly, the first groups will be rather from the rich - seen as a group to be the elite and so rising reluctance to the project of the majority ... joining with terrorist possibility, I think that for a long time it will be secret for the public ... I imagine secret underwater city for them ;)

The problem of terrorist-created viruses is a general one: this possibility equally applies to regular humans as it does to chiral humans. So bioterrorism is not specific to chiral humans.

I completely disagree here - the concept you are presenting requires that there are no chiral versions of pathogens - creating chiral virus would completely spoil this assumption, while synthesizing standard virus only slightly changes the balance.
I'm afraid that there will be always extremists against such playing god - e.g. create chiral virus just to prevent the project ...

Though these chiral human-adapted bacteria would still have regular genomes, not chiral genomes, so perhaps it would be possible to develop potent antibiotics (for use within chiral humans only) that eradicate all cells and microorganisms containing regular genomes, but leaving chiral genome cells completely intact. That should deal with any regular bacteria trying to adapt to living in chiral humans.

I agree here that just consuming chiral sugars doesn't mean they are adapt to live in environment of chiral human body - most of specific aggressive mechanisms would be incompatible and require very long time to adapt ... while our immunological system adapts much much faster - we start on much better position in this war.

#9 Hip

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Posted 05 October 2012 - 02:43 AM

You seem to be throwing this whole idea of protecting human beings from the ravages of infectious pathogens and disease into a bad light.

You say it will be the preserve of the rich. Well, this is often case for any new benefits or inventions, including travel by car when it first was invented. But history shows that very soon these new benefits or inventions reach the whole population (or at least they do in the democratic world).

Then you over exaggerate and distort terrorist motivations. When have terrorists wanted to prevent better health? Terrorism is generally about politics rather than medical research. Even the most passionate antivivisectionists are usually not violent.

Edited by Hip, 05 October 2012 - 02:45 AM.


#10 blurred

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Posted 05 October 2012 - 05:05 AM

Oh, I'm not speculating that it will be only for the rich, but that the rich will have strong influence over the project and so they will dominate the first groups of donors to have "blood connection" with these "humans of the new race" and it will not be liked by the majority.
It doesn't mean that these growing chiral kids will be the rich - the huge number of possible conflicts makes that for a few decades such group will be separated in controlled environment/experiment. In this separation they will be rather brought up in equality within their growing group - what seems very positive while finally they will be confronted the real world with influence of their non-chiral family - not used to its imperfections and seen as the special ones which can heal the world ...

... however, there always will be extremists (e.g. religious) in the world, who will very strongly express their antipathy and gather a lot of followers. Using e.g. argument that it's the strongest "playing god" ever - performing the creation act of (new) human, what will bring a punishment to us or something like that (e.g. to focus attention on such activist) ... and we know well that extremists use extreme measures - don't care that this project could bring never-ending health to the humanity for centuries, but focus rather on armageddon they predict for the next year and so "to protect their souls" synthesize chiral virus to prevent or essentially spoil the project...

I'm not saying that the idea is bad, but that there is huge number of possible issues to have in mind and looking at e.g. nuclear energy or GMO, the sociological ones are also extremely important in our unimaginable complex world.

#11 Hip

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Posted 07 October 2012 - 04:33 AM

What needs to be appreciated is the great damage that infectious pathogens wreak on the mental and physical health of the human species. Only then can you understand the importance of any idea or project to eliminate the deleterious effects of pathogens.

Many scholars say that Roman Empire went into decline in no small part because of their chronic dietary exposure to the toxic metal lead, plus they were simultaneously hit by a malaria epidemic moving up from Africa. Both lead and the malaria parasite can cause significant cognitive impairment, and many historians think that these played a pivotal role in the fall of the Roman Empire, by eroding Roman intellectual capital and cognitive capabilities.

Most people like myself, who were hit with the life-eroding mental and physical symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome after contracting a respiratory virus, know all too well how easily an infection can alter mental and physical health for the worse. Anxiety disorders, depression, ADHD, schizophrenia and others have also all been linked to infectious pathogen causes.

Some people think that the often bizarre and evil behavior of Adolf Hitler may have been driven by an intestinal parasite/infection he had. It is well known that Hitler had constant intestinal problems, and that he had doctors (and quacks) prescribing him remedies for this. Now, intestinal problems themselves are frequently associated with mental ill health (you invariably find gut problems in autism for example; and many people even with just irritable bowel syndrome experience signifcantn mental symptoms and mental state changes).

Thus it is quite possible that the the whole damn Second World War arose from the behavioral anomalies caused by Hitler's intestinal infection, crazy as that sounds.


Human beings have extraordinary capabilities of mind; but the mind is a super-precision instrument, and does not do well when there are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, eating through our central nervous system.

If you want a future in which you have higher moral behavior, higher intelligence, deeper spirituality, then our species needs to rid itself of these hideous pathogens that can destroy and corrupt our extraordinary mental capabilities and morality.


This chiral concept is an intriguing idea, but it will not be the only idea in pathogen elimination; there will undoubtedly be other approaches devised to try to stop infectious pathogens in their tracks. The most important thing is to appreciate that pathogens are highly damaging to us. And this is why we urgently need to eliminate them.

Edited by Hip, 07 October 2012 - 04:51 AM.

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#12 blurred

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Posted 09 June 2017 - 03:48 PM

While this topic might sound like a SF concept, a mirror image of basic but extremely complex protein was synthesized last year in China:

Nature News: "Mirror-image enzyme copies looking-glass DNA, Synthetic polymerase is a small step along the way to mirrored life forms, " - http://www.nature.co...ass-dna-1.19918

 

A direct application of such mirror bacteria would be mass production of mirror proteins (e.g. aptamers) or L-glucose (a perfect sweetener) - there are strong economical motivations to synthesize it.

Hence, in another decade we might find out that first mirror bacterias are already living and multiplying in a lab in China ...

 

Meanwhile, there is an interesting 2010 WIRED article "Mirror-image cells could transform science - or kill us all" evaluating that mirror (photosynthesizing) cyanobacteria would need a few centuries to dominate ecosystem of our planet - what might completely eradicate our life: https://www.wired.co.../ff_mirrorlife/

 

More sources: https://en.wikipedia...al_life_concept


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#13 LOOKINGFORTIME

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Posted 16 April 2020 - 10:34 AM

I have constant Immunoglobulin E (IgE) over 1000,  Would this constant level help in fighting this virus?

 

Thank you for your time.







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