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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...

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...

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...

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...

Racemic Mixtures and the Resolution of Enantiomers

Racemic Mixtures and the Resolution of Enantiomers

A racemic mixture, or racemate, is an equimolar mixture of enantiomers of a molecule that can be separated using their unique interaction with chiral molecules or media. Racemic mixtures are denoted by the (±)- prefix. This ‘optical rotation descriptor’ applies to the whole solution of a racemic mixture rather than a specific stereoisomer. Enantiomers typically have the same physical and chemical properties. Hence, they are not easily separable. However, enantiomers can exhibit...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 21, 2026

Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment

Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment

Published on: July 5, 2019

Circling crystals in chiral active matter with self-alignment.

Marco Musacchio¹, Alexander P Antonov¹, Hartmut Löwen¹

¹Institut für Theoretische Physik II: Weiche Materie, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. musacchio@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de.

|February 19, 2026

Summary

Active crystals with self-alignment and chirality exhibit unique collective motion. Chirality induces circular crystal motion, while dominant chirality leads to vortex-like regions and oscillating correlations.

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Area of Science:

Physics
Soft Matter Physics
Active Matter Physics

Background:

Active matter systems exhibit complex behaviors driven by self-propulsion and inter-particle interactions.
Crystals composed of active units present unique emergent phenomena not observed in passive systems.
Self-alignment and chirality are key properties influencing the dynamics of active matter.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the collective dynamics of active crystals governed by self-alignment and chirality.
To identify and characterize distinct phases of collective motion arising from the interplay of these two mechanisms.
To explore the potential experimental realization of these phenomena in various physical and biological systems.

Main Methods:

Theoretical modeling of active crystal dynamics incorporating self-alignment torques and chiral interactions.
Numerical simulations to observe emergent behaviors and phase transitions.
Analysis of spatial velocity correlations, energy spectra, and temporal correlations to characterize different dynamic states.

Main Results:

A weak degree of chirality combined with self-alignment induces collective motion of the entire crystal along circular trajectories, termed the 'circling crystal' phase.
When chirality dominates self-alignment, global circular motion is suppressed, leading to localized vortex-like regions of coordinated motion.
This vortex-like state is characterized by oscillating spatial velocity correlations, a power-law decay in the energy spectrum, and oscillatory temporal correlations.

Conclusions:

The interplay between self-alignment and chirality in active crystals leads to distinct emergent phases of collective motion.
The 'circling crystal' and vortex-dominated states offer new paradigms for understanding active matter dynamics.
These findings have implications for designing and understanding systems ranging from biological tissues to engineered active matter.