Most molecules essential to life are chiral; they exist in two forms that are each other’s mirror images. Yet life uses almost exclusively one of these. At the origin of life the pool of available molecules most likely had (close to) equal amounts of both mirror images. Somehow life managed to break this symmetry, but it is unknown how.
This project introduces a new route to chiral symmetry breaking, resulting in assemblies of molecules that populate only one of the two mirror images. It is based on a recent serendipitous discovery that an assembly process of a building block containing an adenine residue results in chiral structures of only a single handedness, while the building block itself is not chiral. These results are of prebiotic relevance, as adenine is one of the nucleobases found in DNA and RNA and a likely component of the prebiotic soup (e.g., adenine is found in meteorites).
Knowledge utilization of this project aims primarily at connecting to the general public by developing 5 to 10 publications for “NEMO-Kennislink”, which is connected to the NEMO Science museum in Amsterdam, and explore the possibilities for including the subject in the permanent exhibition of the museum.
