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"Mirror Life" is Still a Hypothetical. Here's Why it Should Probably Stay That Way. [1]

['Marketing']

Date: 2024-12-12 12:04:00-07:00

What’s really critical is that people know there isn’t an imminent risk. We've never built something even close to as complex as an entire bacterial cell. It’s incredibly difficult, and new technologies are still needed to do that in a sufficiently efficient way.

But we're in a very exciting period in synthetic biology right now where new technologies, chemical synthesis, and minimal cell development are moving fast, which is why we thought this was a good time to really have this discussion as those foundational technologies are starting to develop and emerge.

I think the best time estimate we have is that we're probably one to three decades away from something like this being possible, if we made the decision to make this a priority. It would take tremendous resources and the cooperation of a huge consortium of international scientists with specialties in different aspects of cell construction.

This is definitely not going to happen overnight. But it's not so far into the future that we think that it's something we can just hope won't happen for a while.

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[1] Url: https://healthcare.utah.edu/newsroom/news/2024/12/mirror-life-still-hypothetical-heres-why-it-should-probably-stay-way

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