Models of Chiral Symmetry Breaking: From the Origin of Life to Pharmaceutical Separations

Chiral asymmetry choices exhibited by molecules present in living organisms constitute a scientifically challenging set of observations. Such geometric preferences favoring one enantiomer over its mirror image are obvious in the structures of amino acids, sugars, and the biopolymers that they form. These facts generate fundamental questions about how those chiral asymmetries arose spontaneously in the terrestrial biosphere. Thermodynamic and kinetic models of chiral amplification provide insight into possible scenarios for the emergence of chiral imbalance in the prebiotic world. Results will also be presented on a kinetic Monte Carlo model that reproduces experimental observations on attrition-enhanced chiral symmetry breaking, of relevance to the separation of chiral compounds in the pharmaceutical industry.

Speaker: Pablo Debenedetti, Princeton Univ.