A geometric figure has chirality, or handedness, if its mirror image cannot be brought to coincide with itself. The concept of chirality was instrumental in establishing the tetrahedral valences of the carbon atom, and has continued to play a key role in chemistry and molecular biology ever since.The fact that living organisms use only one of two mirror isomers of such molecules as amino acids and sugars, that is, the question of the origin of homochirality of the molecular basis of life, remains an unsolved problem of the same dignity as the origin of dark matter and dark energy.The...
A geometric figure has chirality, or handedness, if its mirror image cannot be brought to coincide with itself. The concept of chirality was instrumen...