Spontaneous appearance of chirally asymmetric steady states in a reaction model including imperfectly stereoselective, chirally autocatalytic reactions

Abstract

Based on the famous Brusselator chemical oscillation model, a reaction model including imperfectly stereoselective, chirally autocatalytic reactions was constructed to investigate the conditions for the spontaneous appearance of chirally asymmetric steady states, and it was shown that a symmetry-breaking transition takes place even under an imperfectly stereoselective situation, leading to a chirally asymmetric steady state spontaneously, under nonequilibrium conditions far from equilibrium. For the symmetry-breaking transition, stereoselective, chirally autocatalytic reactions are always needed but it is not necessary that they are highly selective.