Related papers: Symmetry-breaking in chiral polymerisation
We solve numerically a kinetic model of chiral polymerization in systems closed to matter and energy flow, paying special emphasis to its ability to amplify the small initial enantiomeric excesses due to the internal and unavoidable…
Experimental mechanisms that yield the growth of homochiral copolymers over their heterochiral counterparts have been advocated by Lahav and co-workers. These chiral amplification mechanisms proceed through racemic {\beta}-sheet-controlled…
The stability and conservation properties of a recently proposed polymerization model are studied. The achiral (racemic) solution is linearly unstable once the relevant control parameter (here the fidelity of the catalyst) exceeds a…
A generalized autocatalytic model for chiral polymerization is investigated in detail. Apart from enantiomeric cross-inhibition, the model allows for the autogenic (non-catalytic) formation of left and right-handed monomers from a substrate…
A cluster growth model is proposed to study chiral symmetry breaking in stirred crystallization from an achiral element. Achiral monomers are assumed to coagulate to form chiral clusters from dimers to hexamers. Due to the stirring, the…
We present Monte Carlo simulation results for square-well homopolymers at a series of bond lengths. Although the model contains only isotropic pairwise interactions, under appropriate conditions this system shows spontaneous chiral symmetry…
A recently proposed model of non-autocatalytic reactions in dipeptide reactions leading to spontaneous symmetry breaking and homochirality is examined. The model is governed by activation, polymerization, epimerization and depolymerization…
As an attempt to understand the homochirality of organic molecules in life, a chemical reaction model is proposed where the production of chiral monomers from achiral substrate is catalyzed by the polymers of the same enatiomeric type. This…
The stability properties of models of spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking in chemistry are characterized algebraically. The models considered here all derive either from the Frank model or from autocatalysis with limited…
In this work we used dissipative particle dynamics simulations to study the copolymerization process in the presence of spatial heterogeneities caused by incompatibility between polymerizing monomers. The polymer sequence details as well as…
Most animal body plans have some degree of left-right asymmetry. This chirality at the tissue and organ level is often assumed to originate from the intrinsic handedness of biological molecules. How this handedness might be transferred from…
Living systems have evolved to efficiently consume available energy sources using an elaborate circuitry of chemical reactions which, puzzlingly, bear a strict restriction to asymmetric chiral configurations. While autocatalysis is known to…
Dimerization and subsequent aggregation of polymers and biopolymers often occur under nonequilibrium conditions. When the initial state of the polymer is not collapsed or the final folded native state, the dynamics of dimerization can…
Recently, it has been demonstrated [Magee et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 207802 (2006)] that isolated, square-well homopolymers can spontaneously break chiral symmetry and freeze into helical structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This…
In this letter, we discuss a novel method to search for inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking in theories with fermions. The prime application we have in mind is QCD, but the method is also applicable for other theories, including…
The emergence of order in collective dynamics is a fascinating phenomenon that characterizes many natural systems consisting of coupled entities. Synchronization is such an example where individuals, usually represented by either linear or…
We propose a two-body spherically symmetric (isotropic) potential such that particles interacting by the potential self assemble into linear semiflexible polymeric chains without branching. By suitable control of the potential parameters we…
This paper studies a polymer chain in the vicinity of a linear interface separating two immiscible solvents. The polymer consists of random monomer types, while the interface carries random charges. Both the monomer types and the charges…
The role of asymmetry on the evolution of prebiotic homochirality is investigated in the context of autocatalytic polymerization reaction networks. A model featuring enantiometric cross-inhibition and chiral bias is used to study the…
A fully self-contained model of homochirality is presented that contains the effects of both polymerization and dissociation. The dissociation fragments are assumed to replenish the substrate from which new monomers can grow and undergo new…