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SUMMARY:A New Spin on the Origin of Biological Homochirality - Furkan Oztu
 rk\, Harvard University\, Department of Physics
DTSTART:20240501T150000Z
DTEND:20240501T160000Z
UID:TALK213493@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Selen Etingü
DESCRIPTION:Life needs essential biomolecules such as amino acids and suga
 rs\, which exist in mirror symmetrical pairs. However\, biological systems
  selectively use only one form of these pairs: right-handed sugars and lef
 t-handed amino acids. The origin of this asymmetry remains to be an open p
 roblem and it is this long-standing mystery we address in this work. The c
 hiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect has established a strong coup
 ling between electron spin and molecular chirality and this coupling paves
  the way for breaking the chiral molecular symmetry by spin-selective proc
 esses. Magnetic surfaces can act as chiral agents due to the CISS effect a
 nd they can be templates for the enantioselective crystallization of chira
 l molecules. In this work\, we studied the spin-selective crystallization 
 of racemic ribo-aminooxazoline (RAO)\, an RNA precursor\, on magnetite sur
 faces\, achieving homochirality in two crystallization steps. Moreover\, w
 e have shown the chirality-induced magnetization of magnetite by RAO molec
 ules—proving the reciprocal nature of the effect. Finally\, we suggest t
 hat the achieved homochirality in RAO can efficiently propagate throughout
  the entire prebiotic network. Our results demonstrate a prebiotically pla
 usible way of achieving systems-level homochirality from completely racemi
 c starting materials.
LOCATION:Martin Ryle Seminar Room\, Kavli Institute
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