Inspired by some awesome comments in: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33453037" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33453037</a>
Why would L-glucose taste the same and have the same effects on mood, etc. if nothing in nature could interact with it? I am not an expert in chemistry or molecular biology, but that seems odd.
Great short story. Reminds me of something I would find in on of the collections of short stories le Guin or Vonnegut would show up on as a second or third editor.
Nice!<p>Apparently one organism can use L-glucose, Pseudomonas caryophylli [0]. It's a plant pathogen [1]. No doubt other micro-organisms can as well. So would be a great reset of evolution back to the Cambrian era?<p>[0] <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40609/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40609/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkholderia_caryophylli" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkholderia_caryophylli</a><p>Edit: following this "great chiral collapse", the new evolution is multi-chiral providing a vastly greater range of protein structures, biochemical reactions, etc, etc...
Reading material can't be a Show HN, so I've taken that out of the title.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html</a>
Nice prose, good explanations.<p>A little digression can be interesting.<p>I wonder about the plot: why not create the other bug, that converts glucose back? Then it'd reach an equilibrium.
For a similar, grim, and much longer SF story see the <i>Rifters</i> trilogy by Peter Watts:<p><a href="https://www.tor.com/2012/08/14/psychopaths-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-peter-watts-rifters-trilogy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tor.com/2012/08/14/psychopaths-at-the-bottom-of-...</a><p>Spoiler: a biologically incompatible branch of life discovered in the deep ocean starts to outcompete everything on land once it's brought to the surface, leading to catastrophic breakdown of civilization.<p>"Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts." — James Nicoll