Nature 314, 438 - 441 (04 April 1985); doi:10.1038/314438a0

Weak neutral currents and the origin of biomolecular chirality

D. K. Kondepudi & G. W. Nelson

Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

It has long been known that Earth's biochemistry is overwhelmingly dissymmetric or chiral¹⁻⁴. In model chemical systems⁵⁻⁷ that spontaneously evolve to a state dominated by either the L or the D enantiomer, parity violation in -decay and that attributable to weak neutral currents (WNC) in molecules^8,9 is thought to be too small to have any significant influence on the emergent chirality^10,11. Other conceivable systematic chiral influences are generally even weaker¹²⁻¹⁴. We show here that there is a simple and extremely sensitive mechanism by which a minute but systematic chiral interaction, no stronger than the WNC interaction in amino acids, can, over a period of 15,000 yr, determine which enantiomer will dominate. Such a mechanism is especially interesting when considering the origins of terrestrial biochemistry, particularly in view of the work by Mason and Tranter¹⁵, who found that it is the terrestrially dominant L amino acids that are favoured by the WNC interaction.

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