Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

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...
SN2 Reaction: Stereochemistry02:23

SN2 Reaction: Stereochemistry

In an SN2 reaction, the nucleophilic attack on the substrate and departure of the leaving group occurs simultaneously through a transition state. As the nucleophile approaches the substrate from the back-side, the configuration of the substrate carbon changes from tetrahedral to trigonal bipyramidal and then back to tetrahedral, leading to an inversion in the configuration of the product.
If the substrate is an achiral molecule at the α-carbon, the inversion of configuration is not observed.
Woodward–Hoffmann Selection Rules and Microscopic Reversibility01:34

Woodward–Hoffmann Selection Rules and Microscopic Reversibility

Electrocyclic reactions, cycloadditions, and sigmatropic rearrangements are concerted pericyclic reactions that proceed via a cyclic transition state. These reactions are stereospecific and regioselective. The stereochemistry of the products depends on the symmetry characteristics of the interacting orbitals and the reaction conditions. Accordingly, pericyclic reactions are classified as either symmetry-allowed or symmetry-forbidden. Woodward and Hoffmann presented the selection criteria for...
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...
SN1 Reaction: Stereochemistry02:15

SN1 Reaction: Stereochemistry

This lesson provides an in-depth discussion of the stereochemical outcomes in an SN1 reaction.
In the first step of an SN1 reaction, the bond between the electrophilic carbon and the leaving group ionizes to generate the carbocation intermediate. The second step of the mechanism is the nucleophilic attack.
In the formed carbocation, the positively charged carbon is sp2 hybridized with a trigonal planar geometry. As all the three substituents lie on the same plane, a plane of symmetry for the...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Jacobian-determinant vector method of identifying filaments in a three-dimensional medium.

Chaos (Woodbury, N.Y.)·2026
Same author

Interdisciplinary perspectives on diabetes and microcirculatory dysfunction: A global bibliometric analysis.

World journal of diabetes·2025
Same author

Self-Organized Target Wave Chimeras in Reaction-Diffusion Media.

Physical review letters·2024
Same author

Reordering and synchronization of electrical turbulence in cardiac tissue through global and partial optogenetical illumination.

Physical review. E·2023
Same author

Global trend and future landscape of intestinal microcirculation research from 2000 to 2021: A scientometric study.

World journal of gastroenterology·2023
Same author

Role of insulin in pancreatic microcirculatory oxygen profile and bioenergetics.

World journal of diabetes·2022

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 11, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
08:51

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers

Published on: August 18, 2017

Chiral symmetry breaking in a reaction-diffusion system.

Bing-Wei Li1, Ling-Yun Deng, Hong Zhang

  • 1Zhejiang Institute of Modern Physics and Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027 China.

Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
|May 18, 2013
PubMed
Summary

This study demonstrates chiral symmetry breaking in reaction-diffusion systems using a circularly polarized electric field. Ordered spiral waves with preferred chirality emerge from defect-mediated turbulence.

More Related Videos

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates
06:35

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates

Published on: February 15, 2016

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality
08:07

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality

Published on: March 11, 2022

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 11, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
08:51

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers

Published on: August 18, 2017

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates
06:35

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates

Published on: February 15, 2016

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality
08:07

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality

Published on: March 11, 2022

Area of Science:

  • Complex Systems
  • Chemical Kinetics
  • Nonlinear Dynamics

Background:

  • Far-from-equilibrium systems often exhibit pattern formation and emergent order.
  • A theoretical mechanism for chiral selection in reaction-diffusion systems coupled to chiral fields was proposed but lacked evidence.
  • Chirality, or handedness, is a fundamental property observed in various natural phenomena.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally demonstrate chiral symmetry breaking in a reaction-diffusion system.
  • To investigate the effect of a circularly polarized electric field (CPEF) on spiral defect dynamics.
  • To provide evidence for the theoretical mechanism proposed by Nicolis and Prigogine.

Main Methods:

  • Coupling a reaction-diffusion system to a time-dependent, circularly polarized electric field.
  • Observing and analyzing the behavior of spiral defects (clockwise and counterclockwise).
  • Utilizing numerical simulations to model the system's response to the applied field.

Main Results:

  • The circularly polarized electric field (CPEF) successfully breaks the zero-rotation chiral symmetry.
  • Ordered spiral waves with a preferred chirality are generated from defect-mediated turbulence.
  • The competition between spiral defects of opposite chirality drives the observed symmetry breaking.

Conclusions:

  • This work provides the first experimental evidence of chiral symmetry breaking in reaction-diffusion systems driven by an external chiral field.
  • The findings validate the theoretical predictions regarding chiral selection mechanisms.
  • The study opens new avenues for controlling pattern formation and chirality in complex systems.