Chirality: The Backbone of Chemistry as a Natural Science

Abstract

Chemistry as a natural science occupies the length and temporal scales ranging between the formation of atoms and molecules as quasi-classical objects, and the formation of proto-life systems showing catalytic synthesis, replication, and the capacity for Darwinian evolution. The role of chiral dissymmetry in the chemical evolution toward life is manifested in how the increase of chemical complexity, from atoms and molecules to complex open systems, accompanies the emergence of biological homochirality toward life. Chemistry should express chirality not only as molecular structural dissymmetry that at the present is described in chemical curricula by quite effective pedagogical arguments, but also as a cosmological phenomenon. This relates to a necessarily better understanding of the boundaries of chemistry with physics and biology.

Keywords

• absolute asymmetric synthesis
• biological homochirality
• chemical abiotic evolution
• chirality
• origin of life
• spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking