Amino Acids and the Asymmetry of Life: Caught in the Act of FormationSpringer, 15 d’ag. 2008 - 242 pàgines "How did life originate and why were left-handed molecules selected for its architecture?" This question of high public and interdisciplinary scientific interest is the central theme of this book. It is widely known that in processes triggering the origin of life on Earth, the equal occurrence, the parity between left-handed amino acids and their right-handed mirror images, was violated. The balance was inevitably tipped to the left – as a result of which life's proteins today exclusively implement the left form of amino acids. Written in an engaging style, this book describes how the basic building blocks of life, the amino acids, formed. After a comprehensible introduction to stereochemistry, the author addresses the inherent property of amino acids in living organisms, namely the preference for left-handedness. What was the cause for the violation of parity of amino acids in the emergence of life on Earth? All the fascinating models proposed by physicists, chemists and biologist are vividly presented including the scientific conflicts. The author describes the attempt to verify any of those models with the chirality module of the ROSETTA mission, a probe built and launched with the mission to land on a comet and analyse whether there are chiral organic compounds that could have been brought to the Earth by cometary impacts. A truly interdisciplinary astrobiology book, "Amino Acids and the Asymmetry of Life" will fascinate students, researchers and all readers with backgrounds in natural sciences. With a foreword by Henri B. Kagan. |
Des de l'interior del llibre
Resultats 1 - 5 de 26.
... Thiemann at the University of Bremen. He introduced me to the intriguing field of chirality, to theories on the origin of biomolecular asymmetry, and to the ROSETTA-COSAC community. The international collaboration in my research field ...
... (Thiemann 1998). Would we get something a bit different if we wind back the tape of life again? Will there again be a mix of plants, animals, and humans? Certainly, we are unlikely to get a creature using heterochiral biocatalytic ...
... (Thiemann 1974; Thiemann and Darge 1974). Here, a small asymmetry in an elementary nucleation effect was amplified in macroscopic crystals where it could be observed experimentally (see also Thiemann and Wagener 1970). The obtained ...
... Thiemann 1986; Teutsch 1988; Thiemann and Teutsch 1990). For decades, enantiomeric excesses caused only by magneto-optical effects had been small (<1%) and often hard to detect. In one spectacular case, however, a tremendous ...
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Continguts
Stereochemistry for the Study of the Origin of Life | 17 |
3 | 42 |
When Crystals Deliver Chirality to Life | 61 |
The Weak Nuclear Interaction | 79 |
Light Magnetism and Chirality | 103 |
Key to the Prebiotic Origin of Amino Acids | 125 |
A New Record for Chiral Molecules in Meteorites 145 | 144 |
Chiral Molecules on Comets and on Mars | 161 |
Amplification Mechanisms 185 | 184 |
Appendix | 199 |
Bibliography | 207 |
Index | 229 |
Altres edicions - Mostra-ho tot
Amino Acids and the Asymmetry of Life: Caught in the Act of Formation Uwe Meierhenrich Previsualització no disponible - 2010 |
Amino Acids and the Asymmetry of Life: Caught in the Act of Formation Uwe Meierhenrich Previsualització no disponible - 2008 |
Amino Acids and the Asymmetry of Life: Caught in the Act of Formation Uwe Meierhenrich Previsualització no disponible - 2008 |