Abstract

In this brief review, possible mechanisms which could lead to complete biological homochirality are discussed from the viewpoint of fundamental physics. In particular, the role played by electroweak parity violation, including neutrino-induced homochirality, and contributions from the gravitational interaction, will be emphasized.

Highlights

  • Life is not symmetric; i.e., left- and right-handed biological structures are not equivalent

  • They found [25] that the energy differences between two enantiomeric forms of all aminoacids found in the Murchison meteorite were negative due to parity violation (PV) (the so-called parity-violating energy differences (PVEDs))

  • As previously mentioned in the introduction concerning the role of PV effects towards chiral selection, the electroweak-mediated interaction between both neutrino and dark-matter candidates (WIMPS) with molecular electrons have been reported in previous works [29,30,31]

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Summary

Introduction

Life is not symmetric; i.e., left- and right-handed biological structures are not equivalent. Concerning the evidence of the role played by PV effects in establishing biological homochirality, the works of MacDermott and coworkers have been decisive They found [25] that the energy differences between two enantiomeric forms of all aminoacids found in the Murchison meteorite were negative due to PV (the so-called parity-violating energy differences (PVEDs)). We would like to remark that even though the electroweak force is the only one among the fundamental interactions that incorporates PV naturally, there are some interesting models that extend the usual gravitational theory (Newtonian or Einsteinian) by incorporating PV effects Their possible effects towards establishing complete enantioselection have not been considered until very recently [37], here we remark that some of the parity-violating extensions of general relativity proposed in [37,38] have been already tested [39], paving the way for future experimental observations of gravity-induced homochirality.

Electroweak Parity Violation
Electron-Nucleon Interaction
Electron-Neutrino Interaction
Gravitational Parity Violation
Chern-Simons Modified General Relativity and Loop Quantum Gravity
Method
Gravitationally Selected Homochirality?
Conclusions
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