Chemical and physical models for the emergence of biological homochirality

Top Curr Chem. 2013:333:83-108. doi: 10.1007/128_2012_397.

Abstract

The past several decades have witnessed the development of a number of different experimental approaches to help understand how the homochirality of biological molecules might have evolved in a prebiotic world. This chapter reviews chemical and physical models with a special focus on recent developments in attrition-enhanced deracemization of conglomerates, a process that combines solution phase chemical interconversion of enantiomers with thermodynamic and kinetic considerations of solubility, crystal growth, and dissolution.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Biocatalysis
  • Crystallization
  • Kinetics
  • Models, Chemical
  • Solubility
  • Stereoisomerism*