APA
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Ozturk, S. F., & Sasselov, D. (2022). On the origins of life’s homochirality: Inducing enantiomeric excess with spin-polarized electrons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(28).
Chicago/Turabian
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Ozturk, S. Furkan, and Dimitar Sasselov. “On the Origins of Life’s Homochirality: Inducing Enantiomeric Excess with Spin-Polarized Electrons.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119, no. 28 (2022).
MLA
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Ozturk, S. Furkan, and Dimitar Sasselov. “On the Origins of Life’s Homochirality: Inducing Enantiomeric Excess with Spin-Polarized Electrons.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 119, no. 28, 2022.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{s2022a,
title = {On the origins of life’s homochirality: Inducing enantiomeric excess with spin-polarized electrons},
year = {2022},
issue = {28},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
volume = {119},
author = {Ozturk, S. Furkan and Sasselov, Dimitar}
}
Significance Essential biomolecules, like amino acids and sugars, are chiral; they exist in mirror symmetrical pairs named enantiomers. However, modern life selectively uses only one of the enantiomers. The origin of this chiral symmetry breaking remains elusive to date and is a major puzzle in the origin of life research. Here, we consider spin-polarized electrons as potential chiral symmetry-breaking agents utilizing the robust coupling between electron spin and molecular chirality at room temperature as established by the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect. We propose that chiral bias is induced and maintained with enantioselective reduction chemistry driven by such spin-polarized electrons that are ejected from magnetite deposits in shallow prebiotic lakes by solar ultraviolet irradiation.
