How molecular handedness emerged in early biology Scripps Research chemists fill a major gap in origin-of-life theories.
February 28, 2024
LA JOLLA, CA Molecules often have a structural asymmetry called chirality, which means they can appear in alternative, mirror-image versions, akin to the left and right versions of human hands. One of the great mysteries about the origins of life on Earth is that virtually all of the fundamental molecules of biology, such as the building blocks of proteins and DNA, appear in just one chiral form.
Scripps Research chemists, in two high-profile studies, have now proposed an elegant solution to this mystery, showing how this single-handedness or homochirality could have become established in biology.
The studies were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on February 5, 2024, and in Nature on February 28, 2024. Together, they suggest that the emergence of homochirality was due largely to a chemistry phenomenon called kinetic resolution, in which one chiral form becomes more abundant than another due to faster production and/or slower depletion.
There have been many proposals for how homochirality emerged in specific molecules specific amino acids, for example but we really have needed a more general theory, says Donna Blackmond, PhD, professor and John C. Martin Chair in the Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research, who led both studies.
Graduate student Jinhan Yu and postdoctoral research associate Min Deng, PhD, were the first authors of the two studies.
The conundrum of homochirality
Origin of life chemistry has been a busy field for much of the past century. Its practitioners have discovered dozens of key reactions that plausibly occurred on the early, prebiotic Earth to produce the first DNAs, RNAs, sugars, amino acids and other molecules that sustain life. Missing from this body of work, however, has been a plausible prebiotic theory for the emergence of homochirality.
There has been a tendency in the field to ignore the chirality issue when looking for plausible reactions that could have made the first biological molecules, Blackmond says. It's frustrating, because without reactions that favor homochirality, we wouldnt have life.
Ordinary chemical reactions that produce chiral molecules tend to yield equal ( racemic ) mixes of left- and right-handed forms. Outside of biology, this mixing typically doesn't matter, as both forms usually have similar or identical properties. Within biology, though, as a consequence of extensive homochirality, it is commonly the case that only the left- or the right-handed form of a chiral molecule has useful properties the other may be inert or even toxic. Thus, cells often guide reactions to yield specific chiral forms, using highly evolved enzymes.
The prebiotic Earth would not have had such enzymes, though so how did homochirality ever arise?
A paradoxical result
In their study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Blackmond and her team addressed this problem for amino acids. These small organic molecules are used as building blocks for proteins by all living things on Earth, but exist in biology in just the left-handed chiral form.
The researchers specifically sought to reproduce homochirality in a central process in amino acid production called transamination, by using a relatively simple, plausibly prebiotic chemistry that excludes complex enzymes.
In early tests, the team's experimental reaction worked, and yielded amino acids that were enriched for one chiral form versus the other. The problem was that the favored form was the right-handed form the one that biology doesn't use.
We were stuck for a while, but then the light bulb went on we realized we could do part of the reaction in reverse, Blackmond says.
When they did that, the reaction no longer preferentially made right-handed amino acids. In a striking example of kinetic resolution, it instead preferentially consumed and depleted the right-handed versions leaving more of the desired left-handed amino acids. It thus served as a plausible route to homochirality for amino acids used in living cells.
Tying it all together
For the Nature study, the chemists explored a simple reaction with which amino acids in the earliest life forms might have been linked together into the first short proteins (also known as peptides). The reaction had been published earlier by another researcher, but had never been investigated for its ability to produce homochiral peptides from racemic or near-racemic mixes of amino acids.
Once again, the chemists ran into what seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle: They discovered that in forming peptide chains of amino acids, the reaction worked faster for linkages of left-handed with right-handed amino acids the opposite of the desired homochiral peptides.
Still, the team persevered. Ultimately, they discovered that when one type of amino acid in the starting pool of amino acids had even a moderate dominance of the left-handed form as their other study made plausible the faster reaction rate for left-handed-to-right-handed linkages preferentially depleted right-handed amino acids, leaving an ever-greater concentration of left-handed ones. Additionally, the left-right-left-right peptides had a stronger tendency to clump together and fall out of solution as solids. These kinetic resolution-related phenomena thus ended up yielding a surprisingly pure solution of almost fully left-handed peptides.
To Blackmond, the seemingly paradoxical mechanisms uncovered in these studies offer the first convincing and broad explanation for the emergence of homochirality an explanation that probably works not only for amino acids, she says, but also for other fundamental molecules of biology such as DNA and RNA.
Prebiotic access to enantioenriched amino aci
North America Stories
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
04/12/2025
Gracenote Content Connect enables media ecosystem to precisely align ad campaigns and programming based on rich content signals
NEW YORK - December 4, 2025 - N...
04/12/2025
Lightware, a global specialist in AV connectivity, is looking back on a year defined by new advancements, strong collaboration and continued growth. Across the ...
04/12/2025
Riedel Communications today announced a new partnership with Haivision, a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual col...
04/12/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) and Normann Engineering today announced a major milestone in their strategic collaboration, celebrating 20 successful broadband deployme...
04/12/2025
Creative software developer Foundry today announced Mari 7.5, the latest iteration of its artist-friendly paint toolset that can handle large, detailed assets w...
04/12/2025
Professional Wireless Systems (PWS), a leading provider of wireless audio solutions and RF management, was on site at Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco providing...
04/12/2025
LTN's purpose-built IP video network brings all-movie diginet to over 100 stations and streaming platforms in just three months while eliminating satellite ...
04/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with ThinkAnalytics, the global leader in AI-powered data a...
04/12/2025
The HELM, a global expert in cinematic live broadcast and high-end production workflows, has signed a partnership agreement with Keslow Camera, one of North Ame...
04/12/2025
At ISE 2026, LiveU will showcase its expanded IP-video EcoSystem, enabling broadcasters, sports, production companies and pro-AV professionals to share their st...
04/12/2025
Since the beginning of commercial television, advertising has been a key part of broadcasting. Over the years, the technology for inserting ads into programs ha...
04/12/2025
MUNICH and MILAN Warner Bros. Discovery said HBO Max is expanding into Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein on Jan. 13, 2026, and ...
How molecular handedness emerged in early biology Scripps Research chemists fill a major gap in origin-of-life theories.
