Dynamically Chiral Helical Polymers: A New Frontier in Asymmetric Catalysis?

The presence of a catalyst affects the rate of a chemical reaction. A catalyst is a substance that can increase the reaction rate without being consumed during the process. A basic comprehension of a catalysts’ role during chemical reactions can be understood from the concept of reaction mechanisms and energy diagrams.

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...

The word polymer is derived from the Greek words “poly” which means “many” and “mer” which means “parts”. Polymers are long chains of molecules composed of repeating units of smaller molecules, known as monomers. They either occur naturally, such as DNA and proteins, or can be constructed synthetically, like plastics. They have varied structural characteristics, such as linear chains, branched chains, or complex networks, that contribute to the...

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.

By definition, a spherically symmetric body has the same moment of inertia about any axis passing through its center of mass. This situation changes if there is no spherical symmetry. Since most rigid bodies are not spherically symmetric, these require special treatment.
The relationship between the angular momentum of any rigid body and its angular velocity, both of which are vectors, involves the moment of inertia. The moment of inertia is a scalar quantity only for spherically symmetric...

Biological membranes show uneven distribution of different types of lipids in the inner and outer layers, resulting in transverse asymmetric membranes. The treatment of the erythrocyte membrane with the enzyme phospholipase confirmed the asymmetric nature of the lipid bilayer. The enzyme hydrolyzes lipids into fatty acids and hydrophilic groups. The phospholipase acts only on the outer layer of the membrane, while the inner layer remains intact. The phospholipase treatment resulted in 80%...