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Chirality in Nature

Chirality in Nature

Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid. The...

Chirality

Chirality

Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Interfacial Molecular-level Structures of Polymers and Biomacromolecules Revealed via Sum Frequency Generation Vibrational Spectroscopy

Interfacial Molecular-level Structures of Polymers and Biomacromolecules Revealed via Sum Frequency Generation Vibrational Spectroscopy

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Liquid crystal alignment on a chiral surface: interfacial interaction with sheared DNA films.

M Nakata¹, G Zanchetta, M Buscaglia

¹Department of Physics and Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0390, USA.

Langmuir : the ACS Journal of Surfaces and Colloids

|May 21, 2008

Summary

Achiral liquid crystals develop a chiral structure when aligned on double-stranded DNA films. This chiral rotation depends on DNA structure and liquid crystal properties, revealing key interfacial interactions.

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Last Updated: Jul 5, 2026

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Area of Science:

Materials Science
Biophysics
Organic Chemistry

Background:

Double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) possesses inherent chirality.
Liquid crystals (LCs) exhibit ordered phases like nematic and smectic A.
Controlling interfacial properties is crucial for advanced materials.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the interfacial structure formed by achiral liquid crystals on aligned dsDNA films.
To understand how dsDNA chirality influences LC alignment.
To elucidate the molecular mechanisms governing LC-DNA interactions.

Main Methods:

Alignment of dsDNA films on substrates.
Deposition and observation of achiral liquid crystals (nematic and smectic A phases) on dsDNA films.
Analysis of interfacial structure using optical microscopy and potentially other techniques.

Main Results:

A distinct chiral interfacial structure was observed for all tested achiral LCs.
LCs showed a significant chiral rotation relative to the DNA orientation at the interface.
The observed chiral rotation was dependent on both the dsDNA structure and the LC molecular characteristics.

Conclusions:

The chirality of dsDNA induces a chiral organization in adjacent achiral liquid crystals.
Dipolar and hydrophobic coupling play significant roles in determining the observed LC orientation.
This study highlights a novel method for creating chiral interfaces using biological molecules.