Biomolecular Homochirality and Electroweak Interactions. I. The Yamagata Hypothesis

Abstract

In 1966, Y.Yamagata proposed that neutral weak currents between electrons and nucleons could be responsible for specific biomolecular homochirality in life. We critically evaluate this hypothesis by applying relativistic parity nonconserving calculations for amino acids. The results reveal no clear evidence that the naturally occurring l-amino acids are stabilized by parity violation effects.