2024-03-01 05:00:14
The mystery of life’s preference for a specific form of molecules, such as amino acids and sugars, which exist in two mirror forms but only one of which is used in living organisms, could finally be solved. Researchers from Empa and the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany have recently shed light on an unexpected phenomenon: interaction. information, affects or energy between two agents within…) between electric and magnetic fields could play a crucial role in this choice.
Credit: Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202308666
From Louis Pasteur to Nobel Prize winners like Pierre Curie (Pierre Curie (May 15, 1859 in Paris – April 19, 1906 in Paris) is a self-taught physicist…), the question of the “homochirality” of biological molecules is intriguing . These molecules, although chemically identical, adopt shapes which are the mirror image of each other, called enantiomers. Why does life (Life is the name given:) favor one form over the other? The potential answers remain speculative, despite the similarity of their physicochemical properties.
The explanation could lie in the unique interaction between magnetic and electric fields. Recent experiments have shown that these fields could “discriminate” between the two forms of a molecule when they interact with specific metal surfaces. By depositing chiral molecules on magnetic “islands” of cobalt arranged on a surface. object. The term a…) of copper (Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. Copper…), the researchers observed a marked preference for one of the enantiomeric forms, according to the orientation (In the literal sense, the orientation designates or materializes the direction of the Orient (sunrise…) of the magnetic field (In physics, the magnetic field (or magnetic induction, or flux density… ) applied.
In addition, the transport of electrons through molecules depends on their chirality (Chirality (from the Greek ch[e]ir: hand) is an important property…) in the presence of magnetized surfaces, filtering electrons according to their spin, a quantum property. This phenomenon, called chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS), shows that even individual molecules can exhibit this effect, although the underlying mechanisms remain a mystery.
These discoveries do not fully answer the question of the chirality of life posed by Vladimir Prelog, but they open a path towards understanding how chemical reactions catalyzed by surfaces, in the “primordial broth” of the Earth (La Terre is the third planet in the Solar System in order of distance…) primitive, could have favored the accumulation of a specific form of biomolecules. Thus, electric and magnetic fields could have played a determining role in the emergence of life as we know it.
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