Left and right handedness in nature — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	Here is another word I had not come upon before that well describes "handedness". It also opens up yet another fascinating avenue of thought. [url=http://chirality.ouvaton.org/homepage.htm] Chirality[/url] [quote] Aspartame is a sweetening agent that is more than a hundred times sweeter than sucrose. And yet, the mirror image molecule is bitter. "(S)-carvone possesses the odor perception of caraway while [the mirror image molecule] (R)-carvone has a spearmint odor [2]." These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. DNA, proteins, amino acids, sugars are all chiral. Mirror image amino acids are called L- and D-aminoacids. Human proteins are exclusively built from L-aminoacids. The origin of this fundamental dissymmetry is still mysterious. When interacting, molecules recognize each other just as your right hand distinguishes another right hand from a left when you shake hands. This is why mirror image molecules, like mirror image Thalidomides, so often have radically different fates in our bodies[/quote] [img]http://tao.serveit.org/asylum/shy_gardener.jpg[/img] Loading...
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