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Abstract
Chirality is a fundamental, persistent, but often overlooked feature of all living organisms on the molecular level as well as on the macroscopic scale. The high degree of preference for only one of two possible mirror image forms in Nature, often called biological homochirality is a puzzling, and not yet fully understood, phenomenon.
This book covers biological homochirality from an interdisciplinary approach - contributions range from synthetic chemists, theoretical topologists and physicists, from palaeontologists and biologists to space scientists and representatives of the pharmaceutical and materials industries.
Topics covered include - theory of biochirality, origins of biochirality, autocatalysis with amplification of chirality, macroscopic (present) biochirality, fossil records of chiral organisms - paleochirality, extraterrestrial origin of chirality, exceptions to the rule of biological homochirality, D-amino acids, chemical transfer of chirality, PV effects, and polarised radiation chemistry.
"Every chemist working with chiral compounds and also every biologist has obviously already asked the question: "How did the molecular and macroscopic homochirality of biological systems evolve starting from a racemic prebiological world? And furthermore, how perfect is this homochirality and what are its general consequences?" This book which is based on the contributions presented at an international symposium on biological homochirality offers the first comprehensive review of these fundamental questions of biochirality. It is a real gold mine of ideas for further research to everybody interested in this very far-reaching subject including chemists, biologists, physicists, geologists and even cosmochemists." --László Markó, University of Veszprem, Hungary