Origins of the Handedness of Biological Molecules

Abstract

Pasteur (1860) showed that many organic molecules form enantiomeric pairs with non-superposable mirror-image shapes, characterized by their oppositely signed optical rotation but otherwise apparently identical. Equal numbers of left-handed and right-handed molecules resulted from laboratory synthesis, whereas biosynthetic processes afforded only one of the two enantiomers, leading Pasteur to conclude that biosynthesis involves a chiral force. Fischer demonstrated (1890-1919) that functional biomolecules are composed specifically of the D-sugars and the L-amino acids and that the laboratory synthetic reactions of such molecules propagate with chiral stereoselectivity. Given a primordial enantiomer, biomolecular homochirality follows without the intervention of a chiral natural force, except prebiotically. Chiral forces known at the time were found to be even handed on a time and space average, exemplifying parity conservation (1927). The weak nuclear force, shown to violate parity (1956), was unified with electro-magnetism in the electroweak force (1970). Ab initio estimations including the chiral electroweak force indicate that the L-amino acids and the D-sugars are more stable than the corresponding enantiomers. The small energy difference between these enantiomeric pairs, with Darwinian reaction kinetics in a flow reactor, account for the choice of biomolecular handedness made when life began.