Punctuated Chirality

Details Punctuated Chirality Punctuated Chirality

2008-02-11

arxiv.org/abs/0802.1446v2

Orig. Life Evol. Biosph.38:499-508, 2008

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

13 pages, 4 color figures. Final version published in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. Typos corrected, figures im

Scientific paper

10.1007/s11084-008-9147-0

Most biomolecules occur in mirror, or chiral, images of each other. However, life is homochiral: proteins contain almost exclusively levorotatory (L) amino acids, while only dextrorotatory (R) sugars appear in RNA and DNA. The mechanism behind this fundamental asymmetry of life remains an open problem. Coupling the spatiotemporal evolution of a general autocatalytic polymerization reaction network to external environmental effects, we show through a detailed statistical analysis that high intensity and long duration events may drive achiral initial conditions towards chirality. We argue that life's homochirality resulted from sequential chiral symmetry breaking triggered by environmental events, thus extending the theory of punctuated equilibrium to the prebiotic realm. Applying our arguments to other potentially life-bearing planetary platforms, we predict that a statistically representative sampling will be racemic on average.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Punctuated Chirality does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Punctuated Chirality, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Punctuated Chirality will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-625208