Related papers: Galactic Distribution of Chirality Sources of Orga…
(abridged) We review recent studies of chirality using circularly polarized light, along with the birth and evolution of life and planetary systems. Terrestrial life consists almost exclusively of one enantiomer, left-handed amino acids.…
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is a pivotal question in modern science. However, to address whether life is common in the universe we must first understand the likelihood of abiogenesis by studying the origin of life on…
Molecular chirality is critical to biochemical function, but it is unknown when chiral selectivity first became important in the evolutionary transition from geochemistry to biochemistry during the emergence of life. Here, we identify key…
A key open question in the study of life is the origin of biomolecular homochirality: almost every life-form on Earth has exclusively levorotary amino acids and dextrorotary sugars. Will the same handedness be preferred if life is found…
Chirality or the property that distinguishes lefthandedness from righthandedness is an important aspect of the universe, starting from neutrinos, which are lefthanded. Fifteen years ago the author had proposed that life on the earth was…
Molecular chirality is inherent to biology and cellular chemistry. In this report, the origin of enantiomeric selectivity is analyzed from the viewpoint of the "RNA World" model, based on the autocatalytic self-replication of glyceraldehyde…
Most biomolecules occur in mirror, or chiral, images of each other. However, life is homochiral: proteins contain almost exclusively levorotatory (L) amino acids, while only dextrorotatory (R) sugars appear in RNA and DNA. The mechanism…
Many of the building blocks of life such as amino acids and nucleotides are chiral, i.e., different from their mirror image. Contemporary life selects and synthesizes only one of two possible handednesses. In an abiotic environment,…
The article seeks to formulate a synergetic law that is posited to be of common physicochemical and biological nature: an evolving system, possessing free energy and elements with chiral asymmetry may change the type of symmetry inside one…
In many biological materials with a hierarchical structure there is an intriguing and unique mechanism responsible for the 'propagation' of order from the molecular to the nano- or micro-scale level. Here we present a much simpler molecular…
Chirality is breaking of mirror symmetry in matter. In the fields of biology and chemistry, this is particularly important because some of the essential molecules in life such as amino acids and DNA have chirality. It is a long-standing…
Living organisms have some common structures, chemical reactions and molecular structures. The organisms consist of cells with cell division, they have homochirality of protein and carbohydrate units, and metabolism, and genetics, and they…
Most amino acids and sugars molecules occur in mirror, or chiral, images of each other, knowns as enantiomers. However, life on Earth is mostly homochiral: proteins contain almost exclusively L-amino acids, while only D-sugars appear in RNA…
While biologists have not yet reached a consensus on the definition of life, homochirality - the specific molecular handedness of biomolecules - is a phenomenon only produced by life. The unraveling of its origin requires interdisciplinary…
We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential…
The phenomenon of life is discussed within a framework of its origin as defined by four hypotheses. The 1. hypothesis says: Life, as we know, is (H-C-N-O) based and relies on the number of bulk (Na-Mg-P-S-Cl-K-Ca) and trace elements…
Living organisms exhibit consistent homochirality. It is argued that the specific, binary choice made is not an accident but is a consequence of parity violation in the weak interaction expressed by cosmic irradiation. The secondary muons…
The presence of chirality in the main molecules of life may well be not just a structural artifact, but of pure biological advantage. The possibility of the existence of a phenomenon of a special mode of interaction, labeled as "chiral…
The emergence and spreading of chirality on the early Earth is considered by studying a set of reaction-diffusion equations based on a polymerization model. It is found that effective mixing of the early oceans is necessary to reach the…
In the laboratory, the photo-and thermochemical evolution of ices, made of simple molecules of astrophysical relevance, always leads to the formation of semi-refractory water-soluble organic residues. Targeted searches for specific…