Chirality Quotes

Molecular chirality plays a key role in science and technology. In particular, life depends on molecular chirality in that many biological functions are inherently dissymmetric.

The holy grail would be to turn a knob, and out comes the nanotube of the right diameter and chirality.

The universe is an asymmetrical entity. I am inclined to believe that life as it is manifested to us must be a function of the asymmetry of the universe or of the consequence of this fact. The universe is asymmetrical; for if one placed the entire set of bodies that compose the solar system, each moving in its own way, before a mirror, the image shown would not be superimposable on the reality.

Enantiomers often smell and taste differently.

Chiral receptor sites in the human body interact only with drug molecules having the proper absolute configuration, resulting in marked differences in the pharmacological activities of enantiomers.

Many objects of our three-dimensional perceptual world are not only chiral but appear in nature in two versions, related at least ideally, as a chiral object and its mirror image.

The artificial products do not have any molecular dissymmetry; and I could not indicate the existence of a more profound separation between the products born under the influence of life and all the others.

An object is chiral if it cannot be brought into congruence with its mirror image by translation and rotation.

Are the atoms of the dextroacid (tartaric) grouped in the spirals of a right-hand helix or situated at the angles of an irregular tetrahedron, or arranged in such or such particular unsymmetrical fashion? We are unable to reply to these questions. But there can be no reason for doubting that the grouping of the atoms has an unsymmetrical arrangement with a non-superimposable image. It is not less certain that the atoms of the laevo-acid realize precisely an unsymmetrical arrangement of the inverse of the above.

The structural difference between enantiomers can be serious with respect to the actions of synthetic drugs.

To grasp the essence of chirality, it is instructive to withdraw for a moment from the familiar three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional one, into a plane, and enquire what chirality means there.