Science just released an article, with an accompanying technical report, about a neglected source of biological risk.
From the abstract of the technical report:
> This report describes the technical feasibility of creating mirror bacteria and the potentially serious and wide-ranging risks that they could pose to humans, other animals, plants, and the environment...
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> In a mirror bacterium, all of the chiral molecules of existing bacteria—proteins, nucleic acids, and metabolites—are replaced by their mirror images. Mirror bacteria could not evolve from existing life, but their creation will become increasingly feasible as science advances. Interactions between organisms often depend on chirality, and so interactions between natural organisms and mirror bacteria would be profoundly different from those between natural organisms. Most importantly, immune defenses and predation typically rely on interactions between chiral molecules that could often fail to detect or kill mirror bacteria due to their reversed chirality. It therefore appears plausible, even likely, that sufficiently robust mirror bacteria could spread through the environment unchecked by natural biological controls and act as dangerous opportunistic pathogens in an unprecedentedly wide range of other multicellular organisms, including humans.
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> This report draws on expertise from synthetic biology, immunology, ecology, and related fields to provide the first comprehensive assessment of the risks from mirror bacteria.
Open Philanthropy helped to support this work and is now supporting the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (MBDF), along with the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Patrick Collison. The Fund will coordinate scientific efforts to evaluate and address risks from mirror bacteria.
It was deeply concerning to learn about this risk, but gratifying to see how seriously the scientific community is taking the issue.
Given the potential infoha
Nice. Just giving the thumbs up that last years promotion worked well, so I expect this one to do as well
Excited to see this is returning for another year! A few notes:
- This year's match is (currently) "only" for up to $50,000 (for reference, last year a total of $620K was matched), and might not last very long
- See e.g. my Every.org profile for a list of ~75 EA-aligned orgs on the site (as of Nov. 2021)
- Note that you can fund your Every.org account straight from your DAF
- Here's last year's post, with some helpful info in the comments too
Yeah, people should probably do right on Nov. 1 if they want to get the match.
There are still funds remaining, but it looks like each person can only set up three matched donations
It seems the match is still available but if you took advantage of last year's event you may be ineligible:
Am I missing it somehow, or is this amount not actually at the top of the post? Does anyone know how to find out how much is left?
It's up now :-)
I’m guessing because it hasn’t started yet.
Ah makes sense, thanks!
I know our team isn't super excited by this switch by Every.org. Will be interesting to see how it goes.