Origin of biomolecular homochirality

Determine the origin of biological homochirality, specifically the mechanism that leads to exclusive usage of L-amino acids in proteins and more generally to chiral asymmetry in biomolecules.

Background

The paper reviews the longstanding problem of biomolecular chirality and presents calculations suggesting that low temperatures in molecular clouds could facilitate the formation of homochiral polymers via statistical mechanics (Ising model) considerations.

Despite these modeling results, the fundamental question of how biological homochirality originates remains explicitly identified as unresolved.