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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...

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...

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 10, 2025

Liquid-cell Transmission Electron Microscopy for Tracking Self-assembly of Nanoparticles

Liquid-cell Transmission Electron Microscopy for Tracking Self-assembly of Nanoparticles

Published on: October 16, 2017

Recent advances in chiral nanoparticle superstructures with long-range order.

Fenghua Zhang¹, Yuting Bi¹, Jingjing Wei¹

¹Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, P. R. China. zyangchem@sdu.edu.cn.

Chemical Communications (Cambridge, England)

|August 26, 2025

Summary

Chiral nanoparticle superstructures self-assemble into unique chiral forms. These ordered assemblies display tunable chiroptical properties for advanced applications in optoelectronics and sensing.

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Area of Science:

Materials Science
Nanotechnology
Optics

Background:

Chiral nanoparticle superstructures exhibit unique asymmetric geometries and chiroptical properties.
Spherical nanoparticles often require chiral templates for asymmetric assembly.
Anisotropic nanoparticles can self-assemble into chiral structures with or without templates.

Purpose of the Study:

To review the formation and properties of long-range ordered chiral nanoparticle superstructures.
To highlight the role of nanoparticle shape and assembly methods in achieving chirality.
To discuss the applications and future directions of chiral nanoparticle assemblies.

Main Methods:

Colloidal self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles (spherical and anisotropic).
Utilizing chiral templates (supramolecular polymers, DNA, proteins, liquid crystals) or template-free methods.
Characterization of chiroptical properties, including dissymmetry factors and circularly polarized luminescence.

Main Results:

Anisotropic nanoparticles enable chiral assembly with or without templates, driven by interfacial forces or curvature matching.
Achieved superstructures exhibit tunable chiroptical responses with high dissymmetry factors.
Precise control over interparticle spacing and helical pitch allows performance tuning.

Conclusions:

Chiral nanoparticle superstructures are versatile platforms for applications in optoelectronics, metamaterials, biosensing, and drug screening.
Further research into chirality transfer mechanisms and strong coupling effects is crucial.
Advances in quantum photonics and precision medicine are anticipated.