Scientist Kate Adamala doesn’t remember exactly when she realized her lab at the University of Minnesota was working on something potentially dangerous — so dangerous in fact that some researchers think it could pose an existential risk to all life forms on Earth.

She was one of four researchers awarded a $4 million US National Science Foundation grant in 2019 to investigate whether it’s possible to produce a mirror cell, in which the structure of all of its component biomolecules is the reverse of what’s found in normal cells.

The work was important, they thought, because such reversed cells, which have never existed in nature, could shed light on the origins of life and make it easier to create molecules with therapeutic value, potentially tackling significant medical challenges

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