Topic: homochirality

Tanja Janko interviews chemist Lee Cronin about Assembly Theory, chemical complexity, and the emergence of life. They discuss how molecules can reflect the history of their assembly, whether homochirality could be an early form of chemical selection, and how the Chemputer could make chemistry programmable. Other topics include the distinction between patterns and codes in biology, complex molecules as possible evidence of life on Mars, and primitive cell-like behaviour in inorganic polyoxometalate systems.

Living systems select one molecular handedness, making the origin of homochirality a central problem in understanding how life began. David Lacoste examines how this asymmetry can emerge in autocatalytic chemical networks when they contain sufficiently many chiral species and operate far from equilibrium. Polymerization greatly expands molecular diversity, raising the question of whether it can also generate and preserve a preference for one handedness. The talk develops this connection through an RNA reactor model, studying the conditions under which template-directed ligation and polymerizat

The question of the origin of homochirality of living matter, or the dominance of one handedness for all molecules of life across the entire biosphere, is a long-standing puzzle in the research on the Origin of Life. In the fifties, Frank proposed a mechanism to explain homochirality based on the properties of a simple autocatalytic network containing only a few chemical species. Following this work, chemists struggled to find experimental realizations of this model, possibly due to a lack of proper methods to identify autocatalysis [1]. In any case, a model based on a few chemical species see

Sara Imari Walker and Sean Carroll explore how life differs from other complex physical systems and whether information and computation help explain its emergence. Beginning around 6:38, Walker discusses biological homochirality: the preference for one molecular handedness, the roughly balanced mixtures produced without biology, and chemical symmetry breaking. Their wider conversation considers definitions of life, prebiotic chemistry, emergence, and the search for life beyond Earth.

Donna Blackmond discusses why biological molecules favour a single handedness and how that asymmetry might have emerged. The homochirality discussion begins at 6:18. The episode also covers antiparasitic medicines recognised by the 2015 medicine Nobel prize, blood-based estimates of time since death, Matt Gunther’s interview with chemistry laureate Tomas Lindahl about DNA repair, polymer additives designed to reduce aviation-fuel fires, and carbon quantum dots produced from urine.