Imagine a world where life doesn’t rely on the same DNA and proteins as all living organisms on Earth. Instead, it’s a ...

Same with alpha helices, the building blocks of proteins. Chirality, or handedness, is everywhere in biology, but the reasons can be a mystery. Greg Huber, a biophysicist and researcher at the ...

Scientists have been engineering “mirror life” by changing the chirality of life’s building blocks. Now, it's time to set ...

Experts sounded an alarm about the potentially lethal risks of creating mirror bacteria, synthetic organisms in which the molecular structure found in nature is reversed.

Upon reflection… A group of scientists have warned against the development of mirror bacteria in a report published in the ...

“Mirror bacteria” could evade people’s immune systems, they suggest, causing deadly infections. Such infections could also lead to a substantial proportion of plant and animal species being displaced, ...

Chirality is a fundamental property of asymmetry in nature, where an object or molecule cannot be superimposed onto its mirror image. In the context of nanotechnology, chirality refers to the ...

Natural life is characterized by specific molecular chirality, with ribonucleic acid (RNA), deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and proteins being composed of specific enantiomers. Advances in synthetic ...

Researchers are warning of potential risks from the development of synthetic organisms called mirror bacteria, which have ...

Both results make use of chirality — a structural design that does not show mirror symmetry. Some naturally occurring materials, such as milk or sugar solutions, have extremely weak chirality.

"Mirror" bacteria made of molecules with the opposite chirality could be a serious risk to human and other life. Stock images of bacteria (main) and hands reflected in a mirror (inset).