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Related Concept Videos

Chirality in Nature02:30

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...
Chirality02:25

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...
Prochirality02:05

Prochirality

The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers02:25

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

Molecules that possess multiple chiral centers can afford a large number of stereoisomers. For instance, while some molecules like 2-butanol have one chiral center, defined as a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different substituents attached, several molecules like butane-2,3-diol have multiple chiral centers. A simple formula to predict the number of stereoisomers possible for a molecule with n chiral centers is 2n. However, there can be a lower number where some of the stereoisomers are...
Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur02:30

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...
Fischer Projections02:18

Fischer Projections

Learning to draw Fischer projections of molecules and understanding their relevance plays a crucial role in the visual depiction of organic molecules. A Fischer projection is a two-dimensional projection on a planar surface to simplify the three-dimensional wedge–dash representation of molecules. This is especially helpful in the case of molecules with multiple chiral centers that can be difficult to draw. Here, all the bonds of interest are represented as horizontal or vertical lines. While...

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Updated: Jun 16, 2026

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality
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Published on: March 11, 2022

Chiral surfaces: accomplishments and challenges.

Andrew J Gellman1

  • 1Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA. gellman@cmu.edu

ACS Nano
|January 27, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Chiral surfaces enable enantioselective reactions. Understanding their structure-property relationships and developing new chiral surface science methods are key for advancing asymmetric catalysis and chiral recognition.

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Last Updated: Jun 16, 2026

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Area of Science:

  • Surface Science
  • Chiral Chemistry
  • Asymmetric Catalysis

Background:

  • Chiral surfaces are crucial for enantioselective chemical processes.
  • Surface chirality originates from atomic and molecular structures.
  • Enantioselectivity depends on specific interactions between chiral surfaces and chiral molecules (adsorbates).

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review and categorize three types of chiral metal surfaces.
  • To highlight recent advances in understanding chiral templating.
  • To outline critical challenges and future directions in chiral surface science.

Main Methods:

  • Classification of chiral surfaces: molecule-modified, lattice-templated, and naturally chiral.
  • Review of intermolecular interactions governing chiral templating.
  • Identification of key challenges in detection, preparation, and fundamental understanding.

Main Results:

  • Three distinct categories of chiral metal surfaces are presented.
  • Insights into intermolecular forces driving chiral surface templating are discussed.
  • The perspective identifies critical research gaps and future opportunities.

Conclusions:

  • Significant progress has been made in understanding chiral surfaces.
  • Further research is needed to develop advanced detection methods and high-area chiral surfaces.
  • A deeper, predictive understanding of enantioselectivity origins is essential for future applications.