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Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in a random driven chemical system
William D Piñeros1, Tsvi Tlusty2,3,4
1Center for Soft and Living Matter, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Ulsan, 44919, Korea.
Nature Communications
|April 27, 2022
Summary
Complex chemical networks can spontaneously break chiral symmetry by harnessing energy. This process, driven by fluctuations and environmental matching, leads to homochirality and offers an energy-harvesting advantage.
Area of Science:
- Biochemistry
- Chemical Kinetics
- Systems Chemistry
Background:
- Living systems exhibit chiral asymmetry, a puzzle in chemical evolution.
- Autocatalysis is a known driver of chiral symmetry breaking.
- The role of energy exploitation in general chemical systems for chirality is under-explored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if energy exploitation can induce chiral symmetry breaking in complex chemical networks.
- To explore generic mechanisms for homochirality emergence.
Main Methods:
- Modeling randomly generated complex chemical networks.
- Analyzing systems driven by external environmental energy sources.
- Examining the role of intrinsic fluctuations and system-environment coupling.
Main Results:
- Chiral symmetry breaking occurs spontaneously and generically in modeled networks.
- Energy harnessing amplifies and sustains diverged enantiomer distributions.
- Asymmetric states emerge via energetic transitions and cluster as highly-dissipating states.
Conclusions:
- Energetic drives provide a generic mechanism for homochirality in symmetrical environments.
- This mechanism may represent an early-life, energy-harvesting competitive advantage.
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