The boiling solutions in prebiotic hot springs could shed light on the emergence of a single chiral form of biomolecules in nature, say Spanish scientists.
Amino acids and sugars exist in living organisms exclusively in one of their two molecular chiral forms, which are mirror images of one another. The reason for this specificity has long puzzled scientists. Conditions on Earth when life first evolved in prebiotic times presumably favoured one form over the other, but the mechanism is so far unresolved.
‘We will most likely be unable to solve this fascinating conundrum, but experiments carried out under environmentally credible conditions may be important signposts to this end,’ says Cristóbal Viedma at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. With this in mind, he and colleague Pedro Cintas have investigated crystallisation processes that lead to single chiral forms.
Read the full news story in Chemistry World and download Viedma’s ChemComm communication to find out the exact details.
