> I find it really hard to believe that you can make a whole organism that doesn't have any molecules that can be targeted by an antibody.
We just don't know yet, but I want to believe because I think it's exciting. Protease failure, transport machinery failure, MHC binding failure, they are all stereospecific after all... So it's possible.
> And if you can do that then why go through mirror life anyway?
Because our body can produce antibodies against all "classical" forms of life. It's probably impossible to produce classical pathogens that are fully invisible to the immune system. That's the whole point and danger of mirror life in the context of pathogen creation. Plenty of classical pathogens were our antibodies (usually) don't help already exist though: HIV for example, where only very few people are lucky enough to be elite neutralizers. If we wanted to do biological warfare, it would probably easier to enhance those viruses.
> And if we ever get to this point I'm very optimistic that we would have a good way to vaccinate against this.
I am not so sure about this, if the bodies molecular machinery is unable to produce antigens for those pathogens, no classical or mrna vaccine is gonna trick the body into producing them, it's just technically impossible. You'd need to "update" the whole immune system to be able to manufacture the mirror antibodies and from that we are an eternity away. The only remotely feasible cure in such a world would be through infecting the body with another mirror-pathogen that produces mirror-antibodies or directly injecting mirror-antibodies...
We just don't know yet, but I want to believe because I think it's exciting. Protease failure, transport machinery failure, MHC binding failure, they are all stereospecific after all... So it's possible.
> And if you can do that then why go through mirror life anyway?
Because our body can produce antibodies against all "classical" forms of life. It's probably impossible to produce classical pathogens that are fully invisible to the immune system. That's the whole point and danger of mirror life in the context of pathogen creation. Plenty of classical pathogens were our antibodies (usually) don't help already exist though: HIV for example, where only very few people are lucky enough to be elite neutralizers. If we wanted to do biological warfare, it would probably easier to enhance those viruses.
> And if we ever get to this point I'm very optimistic that we would have a good way to vaccinate against this.
I am not so sure about this, if the bodies molecular machinery is unable to produce antigens for those pathogens, no classical or mrna vaccine is gonna trick the body into producing them, it's just technically impossible. You'd need to "update" the whole immune system to be able to manufacture the mirror antibodies and from that we are an eternity away. The only remotely feasible cure in such a world would be through infecting the body with another mirror-pathogen that produces mirror-antibodies or directly injecting mirror-antibodies...