[HN Gopher] A 'Second Tree of Life' Could Wreak Havoc
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       A 'Second Tree of Life' Could Wreak Havoc
        
       Author : eigenhombre
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2024-12-15 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | treyd wrote:
       | https://archive.is/5MhOW
       | 
       | Why wouldn't it work in the other direction though? The mirror
       | cells would be competing for the same ambidextrous resources (for
       | my lack of a better term). Sugar is chiral isnt it? Would they be
       | able to digest normal chiral resources?
        
         | cyberax wrote:
         | Sugars are chiral. The wrong-handed glucose would be a great
         | sugar replacement, but it's too expensive to synthesize.
         | 
         | The only major non-chiral nutritional molecules are fatty
         | acids.
        
           | Animats wrote:
           | > The wrong-handed glucose would be a great sugar
           | replacement, but it's too expensive to synthesize.
           | 
           | That's not the problem. There's a recent patent on
           | synthesizing L-glucose cheaply.[1] The problem is that
           | L-glucose turns out to be a strong laxative.[2]
           | 
           |  _Levoglucose (L-glucose) is the stereoisomer of D-glucose.
           | L-Glucose does not occur naturally in higher living
           | organisms, but can be synthesized in the laboratory.
           | L-Glucose is indistinguishable in taste from D-glucose, but
           | cannot be used by living organisms as source of energy
           | because it cannot be phosphorylated by hexokinase, the first
           | enzyme in the glycolysis pathway. Levoglucose may be used as
           | diagnostic aid. It has been investigated as a non-nutritive
           | food sweetener. However, L-glucose produced significant
           | laxation, with an average of 4 to 5 loose watery stools in a
           | 24-hour period. This laxative property clearly reduced the
           | use of L-glucose as a food additive. The mechanism of
           | laxation after L-glucose ingestion is unknown, but
           | malabsorption of the compound with secondary osmotic diarrhea
           | is likely. L-glucose is a well-tolerated, safe, and
           | efficacious means of cleansing the colon for colonoscopy._
           | 
           | [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015068724A1/en
           | 
           | [2] https://drugs.ncats.io/drug/02833ISA66
        
         | rolph wrote:
         | pick up your house key, hold it in front of a mirror, look at
         | the key, and the reflection. you should notice the side of key
         | away from mirror is visible, the reflection shows the other
         | side of key .
         | 
         | so the sides of key, and reflection are switched relative to
         | the key.
         | 
         | if you could somhow pluck the reflection from a mirror and try
         | to use it, the left side is right, and right side is left.
         | 
         | when this happens with molecules, there is different parts of
         | the molecules being brought together, leading to alternate
         | interactions, thus different reaction path
        
       | gnabgib wrote:
       | Dupe, discussions
       | 
       | (58 points, 2 days ago, 40 comments)
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42403886
       | 
       | (63 points, 2 days ago, 42 comments)
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42408361
        
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       (page generated 2024-12-15 23:01 UTC)