Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 29, 2025

Fabrication Procedures and Birefringence Measurements for Designing Magnetically Responsive Lanthanide Ion Chelating Phospholipid Assemblies
Published on: January 3, 2018
Molecular Chirality of Biosynthesized PHB Translates into Uniformly Curved Single Crystals in Langmuir Films
Natalia A Tarazona1, Manuela Keller1, Rainhard Machatschek1
1Institute of Active Polymers, Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon, 14513, Teltow, Germany.
Abstract:
While in nature, molecular chirality enables the formation of chiral macroscopic structures through crystallization and self-organization, such a transfer of molecular information to higher hierarchical levels is rarely observed in vitro. Here, the study reports on single crystals of microbially synthesized polyester poly[(R)-3-hydroxybutyrate], which have chiral habits when grown at the air-water interface, in analogy to the 2D crystallization of chiral lipids such as DPPC. Depending on the crystallization conditions, the chiral single crystals either undergo a transition into fiber-like structures, orassemble into larger superstructures with a uniform sense of rotation.
More Related Videos
09:43Interfacial Molecular-level Structures of Polymers and Biomacromolecules Revealed via Sum Frequency Generation Vibrational Spectroscopy
Published on: August 13, 2019
09:22Self-assembling Morphologies Obtained from Helical Polycarbodiimide Copolymers and Their Triazole Derivatives
Published on: February 7, 2017
Related Concept Videos
Chirality in Nature
Prochirality
Chirality
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...
Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...
Fischer Projections
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers