Issue 36, 2022

Perspectives on parity violation in chiral molecules: theory, spectroscopic experiment and biomolecular homochirality

Abstract

The reflection (or ‘mirror’) symmetry of space is among the fundamental symmetries of physics. It is connected to the conservation law for the quantum number parity and a fundamental ‘non-observable’ property of space (as defined by an absolute ‘left-handed’ or ‘right-handed’ coordinate system). The discovery of the violation of this symmetry – the non-conservation of parity or ‘parity violation’ – in 1956/1957 had an important influence on the further development of physics. In chemistry the mirror symmetry of space is connected to the existence of enantiomers as isomers of chiral (‘handed’) molecules. These isomers would relate to each other as idealized left or right hand or as image and mirror image and would be energetically exactly equivalent with perfect space inversion symmetry. Parity violation results in an extremely small ‘parity violating’ energy difference between the ground states of the enantiomers which can be theoretically calculated to be about 100 aeV to 1 feV (equivalent to 10−11 to 10−10 J mol−1), depending on the molecule, but which has not yet been detected experimentally. Its detection remains one of the great challenges of current physical–chemical stereochemistry, with implications also for fundamental problems in physics. In biochemistry and molecular biology one finds a related fundamental question unanswered for more than 100 years: the evolution of ‘homochirality’, which is the practically exclusive preference of one chiral, enantiomeric form as building blocks in the biopolymers of all known forms of life (the L-amino acids in proteins and D-sugars in DNA, not the reverse D-amino acids or L-sugars). In astrobiology the spectroscopic detection of homochirality could be used as strong evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life, if any. After a brief conceptual and historical introduction we review the development, current status, and progress along these three lines of research: theory, spectroscopic experiment and the outlook towards an understanding of the evolution of biomolecular homochirality.

Graphical abstract: Perspectives on parity violation in chiral molecules: theory, spectroscopic experiment and biomolecular homochirality

Article information

Article type
Perspective
Submitted
06 mars 2022
Accepted
26 juin 2022
First published
02 sept. 2022
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2022,13, 10598-10643

Perspectives on parity violation in chiral molecules: theory, spectroscopic experiment and biomolecular homochirality

M. Quack, G. Seyfang and G. Wichmann, Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 10598 DOI: 10.1039/D2SC01323A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements