One of the most striking facts of life is that the three major types of biopolymers (proteins, DNA, and RNA) are homochiral, that is, composed of three-dimensional building blocks all having the same type of handedness.  This talk will present speculations about the origin of this homochirality and how it successfully propagated itself to dominance.  This work is based on the book chapter: 'On one hand but not the other: The challenge of the origin and the survival of homochirality in prebiotic chemistry' by P. Frank, W. A. Bonner and R. N. Zare, which appeared in Chemistry for the 21st Century (E. Keinan and I. Schechter, eds.) Wiley-VCH Gmbh: Weinheim, Germany, 2001, pp.175-208. This talk allows me to revisit and update this material.

What is the origin for homochirality in earth's biomolecules?

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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