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Chirality in Nature

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.

Chirality

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...

Prochirality

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...

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

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...

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

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...

Stereoisomerism of Cyclic Compounds

Stereoisomerism of Cyclic Compounds

In this lesson, we delve into the role of ring conformation and its stability, which determines the spatial arrangement and, consequently, the molecular symmetry and stereoisomerism of cyclic compounds. 1,2-Dimethylcyclohexane is used as a case study to evaluate the possible number of stereoisomers. Here, given the multiple (n = 2) chiral centers, there are 2n = 4 possible configurations that lack a plane of symmetry, as the ring skeleton exists in a non-planar chair conformation. In addition,...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 9, 2025

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality

Published on: March 11, 2022

Chirality and odd mechanics in active columnar phases.

S J Kole^1,2,3, Gareth P Alexander⁴, Ananyo Maitra^5,6

¹Centre for Condensed Matter Theory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka 560 012, India.

|October 24, 2024

Summary

Chiral active materials exhibit unusual dynamics. The study identifies a specific chiral, polar, columnar mesophase with unique 2D odd elasticity, predicting novel column oscillations and instabilities.

Keywords:

active matter chiral liquid crystal columnar liquid crystals

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Published on: February 15, 2016

Area of Science:

Soft Matter Physics
Materials Science
Active Matter Physics

Background:

Chiral active materials show unique responses in their elastic and viscous properties.
Understanding the interplay of chirality, activity, and elasticity in mesophases is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

To identify the most symmetric mesophase exhibiting 2D odd elasticity in three dimensions.
To derive and analyze the hydrodynamic equations for this specific chiral active mesophase.
To predict novel dynamical behaviors and instabilities arising from odd elasticity and activity.

Main Methods:

Derivation of hydrodynamic equations from a chiral active variant of model H.
Analysis of the predicted dynamical effects, including column oscillations and instabilities.
Investigation of the role of active stress (force-dipole and torque-dipole) in material instability.

Main Results:

Identification of a chiral, polar, columnar mesophase with 2D translational order and no elastic restoring force for column sliding.
Prediction of two distinct column oscillation types with non-vanishing frequencies at zero wavenumber.
Demonstration that active stress induces a buckling instability, modified by chiral torque-dipole stress into helical undulations.

Conclusions:

The identified mesophase possesses unique 2D odd elasticity and exhibits novel dynamic phenomena.
Activity and chirality fundamentally alter mechanical instabilities in these materials, leading to helical deformations.
This work provides a theoretical framework for understanding exotic dynamics in chiral active soft materials.