[Qem]

Mirror life would have no interoperability with normal life, in biochemical terms. Say, if a predator attacked a mirror bacteria, and ate it, it would be just like eating an inedible microplastic particle. A technological analogue would be to change tensions in electric outlets at random, between 115V and 230V standards, with no indication of which outlet has which tension. People would start blowing equipment left and right.

[ethbr1]

More specifically, it would have no interoperability with the portions of life that target chiral molecules.

Most critically, metabolic pathways.

But that isn't to say there isn't already varied chirality in nature [0]. The primary reason life is generally aligned to one chirality is because its very purpose is to interoperate with the living environment around it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality#Biology

[phkahler]

>> Mirror life would have no interoperability with normal life, in biochemical terms.

That sounds like a good thing but... Our food chain starts at the bottom with bacteria turning nutrients into bio-molecules right? These bacteria are eaten by other things going up the food chain ultimately to us. What if some bacteria got loose at that bottom level and started eating all the nutrients with no natural predators? What if it out-competed those with predators? That might be game over for life as we know it.

I'm NOT saying this would happen, just that it one of thousands of possible scenarios one can come up with that go very badly. No one can say with certainty which things would or would not happen.

[roywiggins]

The report's scenario is a photosynthetic mirror bacterium eating the bottom out from under the oceanic food web. The existing predators would not be able to eat them, and so they would grow fast, and their predators would then shrink in population and that interaction would ripple upwards sending marine animals extinct.

[GenerocUsername]

It would be way worse than micro plastic and closer to your 115v example.

The parts would be similar enough to form bonds and trigger receptors, but different enough to become permanently stuck, unable to be processed.