A hard look at the mirror bacteria

Here’s what we’re following in the world of health security this week, including a strong warning about research into ‘mirror life,’?a study pointing to cats as a bird flu threat and a lab leak in Australia.?

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Mirror bacteria threat

A group of biologists have warned against continued research into mirror bacteria, in which all of an existing bacteria’s chiral molecules — proteins, nucleic acids and metabolites — are replaced by their mirror images. “The consequences could be globally disastrous,” one researcher told The New York Times.?

As the authors of the study wrote in a commentary piece for Science: “All known life is homochiral. DNA and RNA are made from ‘right-handed’ nucleotides, and proteins are made from ‘left-handed’ amino acids. Driven by curiosity and plausible applications, some researchers had begun work toward creating lifeforms composed entirely of mirror-image biological molecules. Such mirror organisms would constitute a radical departure from known life, and their creation warrants careful consideration.”?

Mirror cells don’t occur naturally and the ability to create them is perhaps a decade away, the study’s authors say. It would take a lot of money and technology, lowering the risk that rogue actors might take on the challenge. But there is some theoretical promise that they could be helpful in creating long-acting drugs to fight things like Alzheimer's or H.I.V., The New York Times reported last week.??

Still, in advance of being able to create mirror bacterium (and the potential, however slight, that they could be weaponized in some fashion, or simply mistakenly released into the world), the researchers are hoping for an agreement that it never happens at all.?

Researchers warn that if mirror bacteria are released in some manner into the world, the impacts could be very bad for, well, everything. Mirror bacteria, they write, “would likely evade many immune mechanisms mediated by chiral molecules, potentially causing lethal infection in humans, animals and plants.”??

These mirror bacteria “are likely to evade predation from natural-chirality phage and many other predators, facilitating spread in the environment.” Once out in the wild, the researchers say, they “cannot rule out a scenario in which a mirror bacterium acts as an invasive species across many ecosystems, causing pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of plant and animal species, including humans. Even a mirror bacterium with a narrower host range and the ability to invade only a limited set of ecosystems could still cause unprecedented and irreversible harm.”?

The 38 authors of the study are calling for a moratorium on creating mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms. “We believe that this can be ensured with minimal impact on beneficial research and call for broad engagement to determine a path forward.?

H5N1 ups and downs

A child in California that officials had said may have been sickened by H5N1 has tested positive for influenza A, but it remains unclear if they had bird flu. The child had become ill after drinking raw milk, experiencing symptoms that suggested they may have contracted H5N1. The child has since recovered and no other family members were ill.??

It may never be conclusively shown that the child had H5N1. However, California remains an H5N1 hotspot. And the USDA confirmed 32 more outbreaks in California dairy cattle, bringing the total number of affected farms in the state to 559 (out of 774 across 15 states).??

Last week, the USDA issued a federal order that will now require all milk to be tested for H5N1, as suspicion grows that milking equipment may be the source of H5N1 spreading among cattle herds. Elsewhere, the Hawaii Department of Health said it found traces of bird flu in wastewater samples collected at Hilo on the Big Island at the beginning of December, the first time the virus has been detected there (H5N1 was previously detected on O’ahu). Meanwhile, five animals infected with H5N1 —?a cheetah, a mountain lion, a swamphen, an Indian goose and a kookaburra —?have died at an Arizona wildlife park.??

Cats could be a more significant vector in H5N1’s evolution, according to a new study that examined 10 North Dakota cats that died earlier this year while infected with the virus. Cats have indeed been among the animals on farms who’ve been sickened (and died) from H5N1. And while there is no evidence of cats yet being a source of significant spread of the virus, the study showed that a cat could be infected with both H5N1 and a seasonal flu virus at the same time, offering the virus an opportunity to evolve to more easily affect humans.??

The study’s results suggest that officials may want to expand surveillance of cats as they have cattle, given how frequently cats have contact with both wild animals and humans.??

DRC mystery

Samples tested from patients suffering from an unknown illness in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo revealed that several had malaria, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The presence of malaria, which is endemic in the region, doesn’t fully explain the apparent outbreak, but may be one contributing factor among many. During a WHO briefing, officials also noted that the epidemiologic data doesn’t suggest an explosive growth of cases or deaths, but given the outsized proportion of children being impacted, the situation remains one that must be controlled.?

The WHO also released its world malaria report last week, which revealed a mix of good and bad news. While the report showed that approximately 2.2 billion cases of malaria and 12.7 million deaths have been averted since 2000 thanks to efforts to curb the disease, there were still roughly 263 million cases and 597,000 deaths from malaria in 2023 worldwide. That means that, despite overall progress, there were still 11 million more malaria cases around the world in 2023 than there were in 2022.??

And while the African region has seen an overall decline by 16 percent of its malaria mortality rate since 2015, the overwhelming majority of malaria cases (95 percent) in 2023 were in that part of the world, where a lack of access to services that can detect, prevent and treat the disease remains a significant barrier to its eradication.??

The WHO also noted that funding to fight malaria worldwide is falling short of goals. In 2023, total funding was around US$4 billion, less than half the stated goal of US$8.3 billion.?

Out-of-pocket spending

The WHO has released its latest report on global health spending, which shows that following a spike in health expenditures by countries around the world to address the COVID-19 pandemic, public health spending declined in 2022 compared to 2021.??

The macro picture hides key differences between wealthy and poorer countries. Most concerning, according to the WHO, is that out-of-pocket spending on health has increased sharply, while public spending stagnated in low-income countries. The WHO found that by the end of 2022, out-of-pocket spending, per capita, in low-income countries accounted for 40 percent of health spending.??

During a briefing to launch the report last week, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that, while overall spending on health has increased significantly since 2000, “the trends in the sources of that spending are concerning. … Out-of-pocket health spending is the most inequitable type of spending, while aid is volatile and dependency is a major issue for low-income countries.”??

Increasing domestic health spending “must therefore be a policy priority for all countries to reduce financial hardship caused by out-of-pocket spending and aid reliance,” he said.?

Along with its report, the WHO has launched a comprehensive global health expenditure database, which makes public health spending in 190 countries since the year 2000 searchable.??

Australian lab losses

Australian authorities have launched an investigation into how more than 100 live samples of the deadly Hendra virus, along with hundreds of samples of other viruses including lyssavirus and hantavirus, went missing from a Queensland laboratory in 2021.??

In what Australia’s health minister called a “major breach” of biosecurity protocol, the virus samples reportedly went missing after a freezer in which they were being stored stopped working. Strangely, nobody noticed the security breach until August 2023.??

There is currently no evidence that the samples were stolen, but the fact that they remain unaccounted for suggests a significant lapse in security surrounding deadly pathogens.??

Another potentially positive sign is that there have been no reported cases locally of the diseases since the samples went missing, and if they were not maintained in a cold environment, they would likely have degraded and pose no further threat.??

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