https://www.tor.com/2012/08/14/psychopaths-at-the-bottom-of-...
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.
"Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts." — James Nicoll
Isn't that also part of the backstory of Interstellar?
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?
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40609/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkholderia_caryophylli
Edit: following this "great chiral collapse", the new evolution is multi-chiral providing a vastly greater range of protein structures, biochemical reactions, etc, etc...
A little digression can be interesting.
I wonder about the plot: why not create the other bug, that converts glucose back? Then it'd reach an equilibrium.
