Month: September 2022

SYMMETRY and symmetry breaking is key for unusual properties of matter that can be programmable. Chirality is a function of mirror symmetry, but life forms have chosen just one chiral species, creating programmable asymmetry, which can also be exploited by synthetic biologists and engineers alike for creating new useful materials. View in LinkedIn

CHIRAL EVOLUTION. "The interesting evolutionary question of how a species of one chirality can give rise to another of opposite chirality." https://lnkd.in/eedbF-C View in LinkedIn

"SYMMETRY BREAKING is the term used to describe the occurrence of an imbalance between left and right enantiomeric molecules. Proposals for how an imbalance might have come about may be classified as either terrestrial or extraterrestrial and then divided into either random or deterministic." https://lnkd.in/ewtA5ak View in LinkedIn

CHANGING CHIRALITY is a subject of considerable practical and theoretical interest, and is full of surprises. Most of the work in this field is relatively new. View in LinkedIn

CHIRAL FROM ACHIRAL. "In my 25 years of doing research, I never thought that I would see chirality occurring in a system of achiral objects driven by entropic forces." Entropy is usually thought of as a disordering force, but that doesn't capture the subtle aspects." https://lnkd.in/ejkstN2 View in LinkedIn

CHANGING SNAIL CHIRALITY by embryonic manipulation has been shown by a Japanese research team. Maternally inherited right spiral shell were artificially converted to left spiral shells by affecting the NODAL signal pathway of handedness. https://lnkd.in/emDSUPW View in LinkedIn

CHIRAL SWITCHING. "A pre-oriented achiral molecule, possessing no chirality at all, can be selectively switched into both its left- and right-handed chiral forms using a finely-tuned sequence of laser pulses." https://lnkd.in/e4sdJz8 View in LinkedIn

TOGGLING CHIRALITY. "Changing the chirality of a molecule being used as a chiral catalyst or a medical drug can alter the outcome of a chemical or biochemical process. In effect, the molecule can switch between a true ‘off ’ (achiral) state and two different chiral ‘on’ states." https://lnkd.in/e4sdJz8 View in LinkedIn

"EPIMERASES and racemases are isomerase enzymes that catalyze the inversion of stereochemistry in biological molecules. Racemases catalyze the stereochemical inversion around the asymmetric carbon atom in a substrate having only one center of asymmetry." https://lnkd.in/eKqKEYk View in LinkedIn

"EPIMERASES catalyze the stereochemical inversion of the configuration about an asymmetric carbon atom in a substrate having more than one center of asymmetry, thus interconverting epimers." https://lnkd.in/eKqKEYk View in LinkedIn