The left-handed form carvone occurs in mint plants and has the characteristic odor of spearmint, while the right-hand form occurs in several herbs and has the odor of caraway seeds. Again, the two molecules are the same except for their handedness, yet they have entirely different odors
Trained canines can scent-screen for a variety of cancers, there's a woman who can use her olfactory sense to detect Parkinson's - even, sometimes,, before it can be medically diagnosed - and mice can be conditioned to proliferate olfactory cinnamon detection sites, and pass that trait on to their offspring. Humans can respond unconsciously to select pheromones in the low ppm's.
@@jeffzeiler346not "sometimes" - her sense was way ahead of medical science to the point where they had to study her to see which molecules she was detecting, and have developed tests which can detect Parkinson's much earlier purely based on the research done with her.
@@Gelatinocyte2 This is correct but, unbelievably, there are companies that sell “L-glycine supplement ” to people who are too lazy to Google this. 😂😂😂🤪
While thalidomide had terrible effects on expecting mothers and their children it did see use as an anti-cancer drug to treat multiple-myeloma. Someone in my life manages this terminal condition with a very closely related drug, lenalidomide. It amazes me to see something with such an awful legacy reapplied to give others a quality of life they would be denied without. Human ingenuity is truly limitless.
The thalidomide that caused the terrible problems was synthesized and included both chiralities. It would have been okay if they'd dosed pregnant women with only the "good" chirality. EDIT: No, even that wouldn't have been safe. See replies below.
@@KaiHenningsen it's less the amount and more the place. From what I hear, Thalidomide and it's siblings restrict blood flow to organs by killing blood vessels. Terrible to the development of a fetus, but amazing when trying to control blood-hungry tumors.
@@person8064 Thanks for the additional info. I confirm, after googling, that you're correct. Both left & right can rapidly switch to the other while in the body, so that in equilibrium there will be approximately equal amounts of both.
Thanks Anton, watching Anton is scientifically proven to improve your day ( even if it's not been great ) and it definitely improves your mind. You even inspired me to make my own YT channel 💛!
In the show Breaking Bad, Walter White used the exact same example of the Thalidomide scandal to explain chirality to his high school class, just like you did lol 👍
Hi Anton. Some organisms have been found to have right hand chirality. There was a plague of ducks dying at lakes in ?Ontario in the 80’s. They found the Mallards had full crops but had lost most of their muscle mass. When analyzed, the bacteria consumed exhibited protein with a right hand spiral.
Interesting stuff as usual, Anton. One correction (3:41). Thalidomide was used in Europe to treat morning sickness around 1960. It was never used in the U.S. for this purpose and it was pulled from the market entirely after the birth-defect link was discovered. Forty years later it was found to be an effective treatment for multiple myeloma, a type of cancer plasma cells in the bone marrow. It is very uncommon today, as it has been largely replaced with related medications with fewer side effects.
I met Alvin Law. He's a thalidomide baby and was born without arms. He learned to use his legs and feet where most people would use their arms and hands. Write. Get dressed. Comb his hair. Play the drums. Play piano.
It's absolutely mind-blowing when people with serious handicaps end up turning it into a musical strength. Normally the most unique handicaps end up being the most original inflections
@@rocketproductions1441 A remarkable case, though with a much small handicap, was Django Reinhardt. He was already a virtuoso guitarist at the age of 17 when his gypsy caravan caught fire. His left hand was burned, rendering his pinky and ring finger almost useless. After a period of depression, he retaught himself to play guitar using mostly just the index and middle fingers for fretting, with occasional assists from his thumb. He went on to be -- in my opinion and that of many -- the greatest acoustic guitarist ever recorded, inventing the genre of "gypsy jazz" in the process. His unique style no doubt was strongly influenced by his physical limitation.
There's an old Roger Zelazny story named "Doorways in the Sand" in which the protagonist ends up reversing his chirality for a time. Everything tastes different but it ends up starting to make him rather unwell.
The information is solid. The thought of life being guided by star dust, is intriguing. It would be great to know protons from deep space had something to do with me being left-handed. Great topic Anton, I wish there were more like you in this world.
Anton you have taught me so much over the years and i am very grateful to you. You are an amazing human being and i rarely miss a day's vid. Hope you life is going ok, love to you and yours. ❤
Makes me wonder if bacteria and other life "later" than archaea developed this as a defensive mechanism to stop pathogens or toxins from permeating more freely. Keep up the great work Anton (the loveliest person)
Steve Mould had the best video on chirality (sp?). I had never had organic chemistry, but his explanation was so good, I immediately caught on & was fascinated.
Handedness is well known in Pharmaceutical drugs. Commonly only 1 of the handed molecules will have clinical effect and the other produces side effects. A popular heartburn medicine is an excellent example of this. It is critical that generic drugs are tested with an NMR to confirm the chirality.
Maybe but I don't see pharmaceuticals doing either as routine. What bothers me is I don't see the FDA requiring chirality analysis for new generics, so really no guarantee they work as well.
@@franks4973 I’m sure they have to characterize the product for the proper enantiomer, but the amount of testing can be reduced by validating the chiral synthetic methods and chromatography methods to separate chiral products.
@@dr.michaellittle5611 NMR or XRD are way better.... 1H-NMR is very sensitive for impurities and fast but for XRD you need crystals and it takes more time. 😉
Chirality may just be the result of evolution. At a cellular all the different systems making up the cell, and keeping it alive are basically organic nano scale machines with moving parts. They don't work mechanically if a protein or sugar is configured the wrong way. It's like a piece of the puzzle that does not fit, a left handed nut on a right handed screw type situation. It physically does not fit.
I would still favour the idea that the early suns polarizing light influenced the amount of righthanded molecules in the early solar system. We find an excess of right handed sugar derivatives in meteorites.
I remember reading about that in an article twenty-odd years ago in Astronomy Now, I think it was. IIRC, it was to do with the polarised UV light in nebulae affecting the survival of simple sugar molecules in the nebula, favouring right-handed ones. It stuck in my mind because it was the first hint I'd seen (in my limited experience) that chirality wasn't purely arbitrary.
I remember a dinner table conversation several years back with a few University level science students, lots of different discussions around the table. one described making a microscopic metallic T suspended close over a superconductor on the flat face. the upper tips had scintillators, electrons were were pushed into the stem of the T one at a time, they then activated one or the other scintillators depending upon the direction the electron took. IIRC, the electron went left way more than 50% of the time. maybe handedness is intrinsic.
Sometimes the best answers in biochemistry for me were the ones I don't like because they seemed like cop-outs. So my instinct tells me that this likely happened because evolution tends to be lazy. Organisms that can perform some kind of job while expending the least amount of effort tended to do better especially under environmental pressures. If we all had the capacity to create left and right-handed proteins for every task, we'd need way more genetic material for the instructions and way more enzymes that have the correct conformation to do the proper reactions those proteins may require. This would be an enormous cost especially for organisms like us who depend on rapid metabolism and cell division.
Chirality seems like a question that can only be answered by eliminating all the possibilities and relying on what's left. A wonderful account of an annoying problem. Thank you, wonderful sir.
Always excellent, thank you. Why should the handedness of life's molecules be of any significance? Consider: A 'wrong' handed molecule won't fit it's metabolic pathway. So if a class of chiral molecules is to become useful there has to be a 'choice'. Once made it can't be changed for any organism to continue to function. We are all assumed to be the descendants of common ancestors who's likely random 'choices' simply remain baked in. No mystery! I would suggest of greater potential interest is if we find life elsewhere. It may be so different from 'us' that it obviously had a separate origin. But it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that "Life as we know it" really is the only option... ...that being the case, the 'handedness' of such an entity's chiral building blocks may tell us a great deal. If, as seems likely, the 'choice' is random then one would expect a separate 'Genesis' to have made some different 'choices'. Equally, if the 'choices' are the same that suggests a common origin. It's only if we keep finding life further and further afield having made the same 'choices' that we may have to wonder if handedness really is important - assuming that question doesn't answer itself in the meantime.
If Thalidomide is ingested in the medically beneficial form it is absorbed in organs(...) and when it is released again some of it will be in the form with the other chirality. So if you ingest one form of a chemical you could get effects from its other chiral form.
It's because of a tiny energy imbalance from neutrinos acting on proteins over evolutionary time frames. You can make a right handed carrot, but it would starve a bunny because we adapted to the minisculilly more nutritious chirality.
Never knew about chirality and thalidomide, although I well remember the crisis it caused. I guess new products can never be tested too much! Thanks, Anton.
While chirality has been known for a relatively long time, this video makes us look forward to new discoveries about its purpose at a molecular level. Hopefully, Anton will keep us updated in the future on this topic.
Isomers are fascinating. A famous common drug could only use the right handed form. But the production process led to LH and RH isomers. they have to be fractionated and it was difficult and expensive. But they found a process to get only RH to form. Cut the drug cost in half.
I think it’s pretty expected for chirality to form since you’d need double the organelles to deal with the opposite chirality. Also, when there is an abundance in one chirality, it’d be beneficial to use that one, causing a loop until there is little to none of the other chirality in the ecosystem.
As always Anton great content. The archea are actually closer to eurkayotes and hence are not more ancient than the eubacteria, and thus unlikely to filter handedess for bacteriA
Hi Anton, I wonder if you would consider removing the background music from your videos. It’s so quiet it has no value and actually is just a bit annoying, you end up hearing bits and it’s quite distracting from what you’re saying. I love your videos and thanks for covering this interesting subject today. All the best
Anton. As a very old Forensic Psychologist I find your brain an interesting place to visit and not at all unlike my favorite guy in history Leonardo da Vinci. Kudos to you and yours. PS - My first thought Re "handed-ness in nature" was to wonder if gravity, as a normal condition on earth would change the probability of these occurrences in growth in weightless conditions, e.g. off-planet, since in the growth of non-living structure as in rocks (composed of various minerals) are affected by something as simple as the direction of a compass needle at the time of its formation as the molten mass solidifies). Just a thought.
Took me a while to realize that we pretty much decided which version is right and left.. Completly arbitrarly.. When you consider that every single cell of every living being comes from the same cell... All life is this much compatible mostly because we are all from the same origin. If we had both R and L dna in our cells organoids, we could assume that cellular life developped from non-live matter more than one..
Right handed Aliens show up to earth after 1000s of years of travel. Finally we found a new home. Wait....oh no.....everything is left handed. We cant survive here....
There is a serious theoretical problem with their proposal: it is impossible to a membrane to be selectively permeable to one chirality of molecule rather than another without the membrane itself being composed of chiral molecules, because if a membrane lets in more L than R molecules, the mirror-image of this membrane would let in more R than L. This means that you are simply shifting the burden to showing why membranes became chiral. Thsi paper doesn't solve anything, but it does give an interesting link between membrane chirality and sugar/amino-acid chirality.
I thought that DNA and RNA were of opposite chirality, since the former is a template for the latter. In turn, RNA acts as a template for a protein which has opposite chirality. So DNA and the protein have the same chirality, but RNA is the odd man out.
Ah yes, I remember in my high school chemistry clases 55 years ago, the mnemonic for remembering what the configuration of an L-amino acid was: you come to a humpbacked bridge, and you can see (c) the end (N), the R-group is on the right! Simples. But it's long been known that L-amino acids are slightly more stable then D-amino acids, and thus the beta-sheet or alpha-helix secondary structures have different stability as well. Still, the notion that early liposomes or vesicles had differing permeabilities to amino acids and sugars of differing handness is interesting... if one assumes that vesicles or enclosed structures of some sort preceded the generation of proteins and nucleic acids. It's one of those chicken and egg questions: which came first, or did they somehow co-evolve?
Interesting thing. I think that I read somewhere in some old Sci-Fi novel about, probably, a planet(?) where "polarisation" was "wrong". Hence any item found, like berries, mushrooms or probably even anomal protein, could be eaten. But you'd still starve to death because the body wouldn't be able to absorb the nutrition. Now, this is an ooold memory from something I don-t remember. Except for that one thing. So... If all proteins were right-handed and we ingested them... Would we still be alive?
The part about thalidomide is a bit wrong. Thalidomide is one of the few chiral molecules that converts from left to right and back relatively easily, so even a pure enantiomer cannot be given to treat morning sickness without running into the horrible side effects. It IS still used for other things but cannot be used if the patient is or can become pregnant.
Ambidextrous here formerly left-handed since I was born. I somehow used later on to do some things where my right hand can't do especially writing, sawing wood or hammering some nails. Maybe I guess was bored in life and do something different. My penship is much better when using my right hand.
Amino acids are the building blocks of life. The Murchison meteorite brought amino acids to earth, in 1969, so it probably happened many times before. That’s what I believe.
There's been a lot of such theories, I remember them from when I was doing a biochemistry degree back in the 1970s. It's probable that life started with a racemic mix of molecules (equal amounts of left and right) and at some stage either left or right had to win out, a bit like VHS vs Betamax. Doesn't mean that one is inherently "better" than the other.
Chirality must have appeared from the beginning of life if we understand its emergence from processes of selection of auto-catalytic subsets of molecules. Indeed, from a strict counting point of view, as soon as we exceed 3 or 4 atoms, chiral molecules are much more numerous than non-chiral ones. If we move on to subsets of molecules, the proportion of chirals ones (i.e. containing at least one chiral molecule) is even greater. Selection processes on subsets of molecules that were overwhelmingly chiral made life appear in chiral form, because it was infinitely more probable. There is no need to evoke a “special event” for the appearance of chirality if it is from the start more natural than non-chirality.
I box 🥊 I am right handed dominant but know how to use my left but not with as high dexterity but i work on it. I stand southpaw leading with my right meaning my power hand is my left. I am so proficient with both i can switch to orthodox. My styles are similar but change slightly between each other whether i lead left or right. Guess the same exact things can be different slightly depending on Left or Right lol. I guess its the universe version of “in English or in spanish”
In 1957 the violation of parity was shown by Chien-Shiung Wu , implying even the mirror image of a lone atom might not exist let alone the mirror image of any life form.
On the other hand...... everything in the Universe spins and spirals. Would be interesting to know if and how much molecular spin, chirality and homochirality extrapolates to the left/right symmetry of just about every living complex organism. Could help explain the lack of one-handed single-footed cyclopes with a unicorn horn protruding from its head between its eye and single ear.
Does that mean that ancient people had a better understanding sorta of things going on? Are left handed and right handed people fundamentally different? It seems like one of those things that was learned and forgotten origin from long before.
My theory has always been that Chirality was caused by one of the precursors for life, coming into existence, due to a freekishly unlikely event. If you have a cocktail of organic compounds, what is the likelyhood that a strand of RNA will just contruct itself? It requires that millions of atoms just meet in exactly the right orientation to form a viable strand of RNA. Once formed, this one single strand of RNA will then self duplicate. In due course you'll have a veritable ocean of the stuff. ALL with the same chirality as that one fatefully produced molecule. All life could then evolve from this one freek event. But since all this RNA has the same chirality, then all the proteins, sugars and other organic compounds, built from it have their own specific chirality. This would mean that the likelyhood of life existing elsewhere might be far less likely than we realise.
We're all just kind of holding our breath right now. between Fermi thought experiments and our growing mountains of observational data,, I'm personally starting to become convinced that this universe wanted a live audience that was only *just* smart enough to appreciate all the art in space and then blow themselves up. All these fancy systems that work together seamlessly and we're hoping and praying that ATLEAST the basic microbiologic building blocks of life have a chance of occuring again. WHERES THE PARTY 😭
I was born Left Handed but my Mom cut off the tip of my middle finger in a car door when I was 5 & had to learn how to do everything with my right hand....
ever wondered why we humans all look so incredibly diverse, aesthetically as well as genetically? while all other species we know off almost look the same?
This theory may explain the differences between right and left molecules in biological terms. However, from chemical point of view, it should be considered that some left or right molecules are easily obtained according to chemical reaction and the respective conditions. Thus, it is not a separation aspect but an energetic minimization problem!
"We're talking about sugars, proteins, amino acids, and even certain molecules." Everything on your list is a molecule. Proteins are chains of linked amino acids.
But why is the membrane more permeable to one chirality than the other? The only way is for the membrane itself to be chiral, right? So then why is the membrane chiral? If this study is true, it just moves the question from "why are the proteins and sugars chiral" to "why is the membrane chiral". Unless somehow a non-chiral membrane is more permeable to one chirality of molecules, which would be very strange.
Yes. Questions. It's easy to see how the mirror image of a shape can be different. Two parities and an absence of reflective symmetry. Easy peasy. But how do you get from that to chirality? How can you look at a shape as arbitrary and complex as a protein and say, "this is left rather than right because..."? What are the criteria for deciding between two opposing categories, given that they must work for all shapes? Is it that thing with polarized light? If so, how can this map in such a way that you can match left-handed with right-handed in general? Is the light partucularly sensitive to the parts you are interested in? Are they more _grabby_ then the rest, and does this specifically affect polarization? This _seems_ like spin. You can predict it will be up or down, which is easy. But you can't tell without measuring, and you can't measure without first determining what up and down even are.
as i remember it indeed has to do with polarized light, circular polarized light to be specific. the handedness is which direction the light "turns" after passing through the stuff.
I had read about something like that years ago. The study was about light being polarized in a determined way in sugar, if I remember correctly and that would "imprint" a chirality on proteins, I'm not sure anymore, I'm sorry. Maybe it had nothing to do with proteins, actually. I think it was about the chirality of sugar itself. Apparently it can rotate the plane of polarized light. It's not the same. My bad.
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The left-handed form carvone occurs in mint plants and has the characteristic odor of spearmint, while the right-hand form occurs in several herbs and has the odor of caraway seeds. Again, the two molecules are the same except for their handedness, yet they have entirely different odors
Because your odor receptors have a handedness.
Trained canines can scent-screen for a variety of cancers, there's a woman who can use her olfactory sense to detect Parkinson's - even, sometimes,, before it can be medically diagnosed - and mice can be conditioned to proliferate olfactory cinnamon detection sites, and pass that trait on to their offspring. Humans can respond unconsciously to select pheromones in the low ppm's.
@@jeffzeiler346not "sometimes" - her sense was way ahead of medical science to the point where they had to study her to see which molecules she was detecting, and have developed tests which can detect Parkinson's much earlier purely based on the research done with her.
I once ate a mint brownie that was apparently flavored with racemic carvone. mint carroway chocolate is not very appealing...
@@personzorzSame goes for taste buds. If I remember correctly right handed molecules are sweeter
Just got to the Thalidomide section...still wishing you and your family the best
Was someone he knows affected by that? Terrible tragedy, I can’t imagine how the parents felt 😢
why the still word though?
Fun fact: glycine - one of the 20 "canonical" amino acids - has no handedness, it is completely symmetrical.
Yes because it's a manlet
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 lmao what?
@@destructorzz7197I think it's a joke about it being small😂
@@coliimusicSomething more creative like "amino-let" would have made more sense than
@@Gelatinocyte2
This is correct but, unbelievably, there are companies that sell “L-glycine supplement ” to people who are too lazy to Google this. 😂😂😂🤪
I know that this video is coming from normal Anton... If it were mirror Anton, he would have had a pointy goatee and curled moustache... 😂😂😂
Plot twist : next upload 👀
And wearing a metallic golden sash!
We all know Anti-Anton is the opposite and spreads fear and misinformation 😅
And making fascistic salutes
True.
While thalidomide had terrible effects on expecting mothers and their children it did see use as an anti-cancer drug to treat multiple-myeloma. Someone in my life manages this terminal condition with a very closely related drug, lenalidomide. It amazes me to see something with such an awful legacy reapplied to give others a quality of life they would be denied without. Human ingenuity is truly limitless.
Everything is a poison. It all depends on the amount.
The thalidomide that caused the terrible problems was synthesized and included both chiralities. It would have been okay if they'd dosed pregnant women with only the "good" chirality. EDIT: No, even that wouldn't have been safe. See replies below.
@@brothermine2292 the problem was that even after purifying only the good chirality, the drug readily converted back into the bad version
@@KaiHenningsen it's less the amount and more the place. From what I hear, Thalidomide and it's siblings restrict blood flow to organs by killing blood vessels. Terrible to the development of a fetus, but amazing when trying to control blood-hungry tumors.
@@person8064 Thanks for the additional info. I confirm, after googling, that you're correct. Both left & right can rapidly switch to the other while in the body, so that in equilibrium there will be approximately equal amounts of both.
We agree with you not needing to cover that particular subject.
sending love, sympathy, and support to you and yours
Thanks Anton, watching Anton is scientifically proven to improve your day ( even if it's not been great ) and it definitely improves your mind. You even inspired me to make my own YT channel 💛!
Run for it!
No need to explain everything, we understand. Sending a hug your way, man.
In the show Breaking Bad, Walter White used the exact same example of the Thalidomide scandal to explain chirality to his high school class, just like you did lol 👍
Is this gonna be on the murder?
@@wildfallzWhat?
Is this gonna be on the midterm?
@@wildfallz You're g'dam right it is.
You guys are awesome 😂
👍
Anton, thank you so much for telling us about this. And our virtual hugs and support to you and your family always!
Hi Anton.
Some organisms have been found to have right hand chirality.
There was a plague of ducks dying at lakes in ?Ontario in the 80’s. They found the Mallards had full crops but had lost most of their muscle mass. When analyzed, the bacteria consumed exhibited protein with a right hand spiral.
Wonderful as always Anton. Thank you. 😎🙏
Interesting stuff as usual, Anton. One correction (3:41). Thalidomide was used in Europe to treat morning sickness around 1960. It was never used in the U.S. for this purpose and it was pulled from the market entirely after the birth-defect link was discovered. Forty years later it was found to be an effective treatment for multiple myeloma, a type of cancer plasma cells in the bone marrow. It is very uncommon today, as it has been largely replaced with related medications with fewer side effects.
I met Alvin Law. He's a thalidomide baby and was born without arms. He learned to use his legs and feet where most people would use their arms and hands. Write. Get dressed. Comb his hair. Play the drums. Play piano.
Read The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
It's absolutely mind-blowing when people with serious handicaps end up turning it into a musical strength. Normally the most unique handicaps end up being the most original inflections
@@rocketproductions1441 A remarkable case, though with a much small handicap, was Django Reinhardt. He was already a virtuoso guitarist at the age of 17 when his gypsy caravan caught fire. His left hand was burned, rendering his pinky and ring finger almost useless. After a period of depression, he retaught himself to play guitar using mostly just the index and middle fingers for fretting, with occasional assists from his thumb. He went on to be -- in my opinion and that of many -- the greatest acoustic guitarist ever recorded, inventing the genre of "gypsy jazz" in the process. His unique style no doubt was strongly influenced by his physical limitation.
@@RadicalCavemanso he was ... a _right-handed pro-teen??_ 😊
@@QuestionMarc316 Oho! Excellent pun!
I love these kind of videos where people from other fields (chemists and biochemists, in this case) comment all sorts of related interesting factoids.
Had to watch this one twice - lots of interesting tangents to go back and look into.
There's an old Roger Zelazny story named "Doorways in the Sand" in which the protagonist ends up reversing his chirality for a time. Everything tastes different but it ends up starting to make him rather unwell.
Best wishes Anton
The only thing that you need to remember is that everything goes in the square hole :)
The ultimate secret of the universe.
💗appreciate you and your content, Anton ☮
The information is solid. The thought of life being guided by star dust, is intriguing. It would be great to know protons from deep space had something to do with me being left-handed. Great topic Anton, I wish there were more like you in this world.
Are there protons not from space?
Yes we find an excess of right handed sugar derivatives in meteorites. This is likely from the early suns polarizing light.
@@jamesdriscoll_tmp1515 Everything is from Space...
Anton you have taught me so much over the years and i am very grateful to you. You are an amazing human being and i rarely miss a day's vid. Hope you life is going ok, love to you and yours. ❤
Chirality is one of the reasons we humans are unfit for alien consumption.
And vice versa!😂
I'm good with that. Now I do wish mosquitoes found me less appealing. They think I'm delicious
@@christopherlewis1847ab+ blood? They love that type
Makes me wonder if bacteria and other life "later" than archaea developed this as a defensive mechanism to stop pathogens or toxins from permeating more freely. Keep up the great work Anton (the loveliest person)
You are marvelous, Anton! I have learned so much, and continue to learn. Thank you!
Steve Mould had the best video on chirality (sp?). I had never had organic chemistry, but his explanation was so good, I immediately caught on & was fascinated.
Handedness is well known in Pharmaceutical drugs. Commonly only 1 of the handed molecules will have clinical effect and the other produces side effects. A popular heartburn medicine is an excellent example of this. It is critical that generic drugs are tested with an NMR to confirm the chirality.
Wouldn’t circular dichroism be a better analytical method v NMR?
Found out about the spin in heartburn meds the hard way, forgot, and had to have a second lesson with a new doctor.
Maybe but I don't see pharmaceuticals doing either as routine. What bothers me is I don't see the FDA requiring chirality analysis for new generics, so really no guarantee they work as well.
@@franks4973
I’m sure they have to characterize the product for the proper enantiomer, but the amount of testing can be reduced by validating the chiral synthetic methods and chromatography methods to separate chiral products.
@@dr.michaellittle5611 NMR or XRD are way better.... 1H-NMR is very sensitive for impurities and fast but for XRD you need crystals and it takes more time. 😉
@3:51 that moment made my stomach turn a little.
FYI, I often post your content for students in my intro bio class
Chirality may just be the result of evolution. At a cellular all the different systems making up the cell, and keeping it alive are basically organic nano scale machines with moving parts. They don't work mechanically if a protein or sugar is configured the wrong way. It's like a piece of the puzzle that does not fit, a left handed nut on a right handed screw type situation. It physically does not fit.
Thank you for all your hard work!
I would still favour the idea that the early suns polarizing light influenced the amount of righthanded molecules in the early solar system.
We find an excess of right handed sugar derivatives in meteorites.
I remember reading about that in an article twenty-odd years ago in Astronomy Now, I think it was. IIRC, it was to do with the polarised UV light in nebulae affecting the survival of simple sugar molecules in the nebula, favouring right-handed ones.
It stuck in my mind because it was the first hint I'd seen (in my limited experience) that chirality wasn't purely arbitrary.
I remember a dinner table conversation several years back with a few University level science students, lots of different discussions around the table. one described making a microscopic metallic T suspended close over a superconductor on the flat face. the upper tips had scintillators, electrons were were pushed into the stem of the T one at a time, they then activated one or the other scintillators depending upon the direction the electron took. IIRC, the electron went left way more than 50% of the time.
maybe handedness is intrinsic.
Sometimes the best answers in biochemistry for me were the ones I don't like because they seemed like cop-outs. So my instinct tells me that this likely happened because evolution tends to be lazy. Organisms that can perform some kind of job while expending the least amount of effort tended to do better especially under environmental pressures. If we all had the capacity to create left and right-handed proteins for every task, we'd need way more genetic material for the instructions and way more enzymes that have the correct conformation to do the proper reactions those proteins may require. This would be an enormous cost especially for organisms like us who depend on rapid metabolism and cell division.
Chirality seems like a question that can only be answered by eliminating all the possibilities and relying on what's left.
A wonderful account of an annoying problem.
Thank you, wonderful sir.
No sh*t Sherlock
Relying on what's "LEFT"... 😅 Get it?
But is it still right?
@@EMLtheViewer Out of the two choices, whatever is left can't be right...
@@johnathanarcher1487 I just woke up so, no, I didn't right away. Thanks for the assistance.
Another great video, much to learn, thanks ❤👍
"We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world was turning... children of thalidomide" 😢
0:44 I'm sure I won't be the only nerd saying this, but there are boatloads of molecules that aren't chiral.
Always excellent, thank you.
Why should the handedness of life's molecules be of any significance? Consider: A 'wrong' handed molecule won't fit it's metabolic pathway. So if a class of chiral molecules is to become useful there has to be a 'choice'. Once made it can't be changed for any organism to continue to function. We are all assumed to be the descendants of common ancestors who's likely random 'choices' simply remain baked in. No mystery!
I would suggest of greater potential interest is if we find life elsewhere.
It may be so different from 'us' that it obviously had a separate origin. But it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that "Life as we know it" really is the only option...
...that being the case, the 'handedness' of such an entity's chiral building blocks may tell us a great deal. If, as seems likely, the 'choice' is random then one would expect a separate 'Genesis' to have made some different 'choices'. Equally, if the 'choices' are the same that suggests a common origin.
It's only if we keep finding life further and further afield having made the same 'choices' that we may have to wonder if handedness really is important - assuming that question doesn't answer itself in the meantime.
If Thalidomide is ingested in the medically beneficial form it is absorbed in organs(...) and when it is released again some of it will be in the form with the other chirality. So if you ingest one form of a chemical you could get effects from its other chiral form.
It's because of a tiny energy imbalance from neutrinos acting on proteins over evolutionary time frames. You can make a right handed carrot, but it would starve a bunny because we adapted to the minisculilly more nutritious chirality.
Never knew about chirality and thalidomide, although I well remember the crisis it caused. I guess new products can never be tested too much! Thanks, Anton.
While chirality has been known for a relatively long time, this video makes us look forward to new discoveries about its purpose at a molecular level. Hopefully, Anton will keep us updated in the future on this topic.
The purpose is simple. The glove must fit the appropriate hand
thanks anton! love that feeling when i click on my subs page, and see a fresh video from you!
1:10 Anton explaining his left hand appears on our right to people that are watching a video about modern biology. Anton is the best
Isomers are fascinating. A famous common drug could only use the right handed form. But the production process led to LH and RH isomers. they have to be fractionated and it was difficult and expensive. But they found a process to get only RH to form. Cut the drug cost in half.
Thank you very much!
Great content 👌
I think it’s pretty expected for chirality to form since you’d need double the organelles to deal with the opposite chirality. Also, when there is an abundance in one chirality, it’d be beneficial to use that one, causing a loop until there is little to none of the other chirality in the ecosystem.
As always Anton great content. The archea are actually closer to eurkayotes and hence are not more ancient than the eubacteria, and thus unlikely to filter handedess for bacteriA
Fascinating... so, so Fascinating 😮wow
It could also be symmetry breaking, by chance, one-handed life will crowd out other life.
Hi Anton, I wonder if you would consider removing the background music from your videos. It’s so quiet it has no value and actually is just a bit annoying, you end up hearing bits and it’s quite distracting from what you’re saying. I love your videos and thanks for covering this interesting subject today. All the best
0:12 Hello, Anton! 😆
LSD and iso-LSD is a trippy example 😜
Anton. As a very old Forensic Psychologist I find your brain an interesting place to visit and not at all unlike my favorite guy in history Leonardo da Vinci.
Kudos to you and yours.
PS - My first thought Re "handed-ness in nature" was to wonder if gravity, as a normal condition on earth would change the probability of these occurrences in growth in weightless conditions, e.g. off-planet, since in the growth of non-living structure as in rocks (composed of various minerals) are affected by something as simple as the direction of a compass needle at the time of its formation as the molten mass solidifies). Just a thought.
Took me a while to realize that we pretty much decided which version is right and left.. Completly arbitrarly..
When you consider that every single cell of every living being comes from the same cell... All life is this much compatible mostly because we are all from the same origin.
If we had both R and L dna in our cells organoids, we could assume that cellular life developped from non-live matter more than one..
Right handed Aliens show up to earth after 1000s of years of travel. Finally we found a new home.
Wait....oh no.....everything is left handed. We cant survive here....
There is a serious theoretical problem with their proposal: it is impossible to a membrane to be selectively permeable to one chirality of molecule rather than another without the membrane itself being composed of chiral molecules, because if a membrane lets in more L than R molecules, the mirror-image of this membrane would let in more R than L. This means that you are simply shifting the burden to showing why membranes became chiral. Thsi paper doesn't solve anything, but it does give an interesting link between membrane chirality and sugar/amino-acid chirality.
Really interesting indeed!
I thought that DNA and RNA were of opposite chirality, since the former is a template for the latter.
In turn, RNA acts as a template for a protein which has opposite chirality.
So DNA and the protein have the same chirality, but RNA is the odd man out.
Nope. Both nucleic acids are the same chirality; they wouldn't work otherwise.
Thank you 🙂
I hate it when I have to send a meal back because I want the _right_ protein instead.
Chirality time 🎉
Assembly Time
Ah yes, I remember in my high school chemistry clases 55 years ago, the mnemonic for remembering what the configuration of an L-amino acid was: you come to a humpbacked bridge, and you can see (c) the end (N), the R-group is on the right! Simples. But it's long been known that L-amino acids are slightly more stable then D-amino acids, and thus the beta-sheet or alpha-helix secondary structures have different stability as well.
Still, the notion that early liposomes or vesicles had differing permeabilities to amino acids and sugars of differing handness is interesting... if one assumes that vesicles or enclosed structures of some sort preceded the generation of proteins and nucleic acids. It's one of those chicken and egg questions: which came first, or did they somehow co-evolve?
Interesting thing. I think that I read somewhere in some old Sci-Fi novel about, probably, a planet(?) where "polarisation" was "wrong". Hence any item found, like berries, mushrooms or probably even anomal protein, could be eaten. But you'd still starve to death because the body wouldn't be able to absorb the nutrition. Now, this is an ooold memory from something I don-t remember. Except for that one thing. So... If all proteins were right-handed and we ingested them... Would we still be alive?
Great show
7:27 Best video snippet on the topic of AI and origins of life ;)
A rogue supermassive black hole is terrifying. However, if that's the way we go out, it wouldn't be the worst. 😂
The part about thalidomide is a bit wrong. Thalidomide is one of the few chiral molecules that converts from left to right and back relatively easily, so even a pure enantiomer cannot be given to treat morning sickness without running into the horrible side effects. It IS still used for other things but cannot be used if the patient is or can become pregnant.
I'd say it's a bit more than "a bit" wrong.
Day 32 asking for Anton to make What Da Math a standalone series on the channel
Oh man, I remember the _What Da Math_ videos. That was a long time ago, I miss that series.
@@Gelatinocyte2 they were so fun. Super cozy
Ambidextrous here formerly left-handed since I was born. I somehow used later on to do some things where my right hand can't do especially writing, sawing wood or hammering some nails. Maybe I guess was bored in life and do something different. My penship is much better when using my right hand.
1:26 north hemisphere and southern 🤷🏻♂️ When standing in relative union life turns the same but different 🙋🏻♂️like the water flow phenomenon 5:41
Amino acids aren't categorized by the way they polarize light, but by using glyceraldehyde as a reference. For example L-alanine is dextrorotatory.
Amino acids are the building blocks of life. The Murchison meteorite brought amino acids to earth, in 1969, so it probably happened many times before. That’s what I believe.
*one of the building blocks of life. Nucleic acids and fatty acids are there, too.
Nice one!
There's been a lot of such theories, I remember them from when I was doing a biochemistry degree back in the 1970s. It's probable that life started with a racemic mix of molecules (equal amounts of left and right) and at some stage either left or right had to win out, a bit like VHS vs Betamax. Doesn't mean that one is inherently "better" than the other.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a wonderful short SciFi book by Becky Chambers that explores this topic.
Chirality must have appeared from the beginning of life if we understand its emergence from processes of selection of auto-catalytic subsets of molecules.
Indeed, from a strict counting point of view, as soon as we exceed 3 or 4 atoms, chiral molecules are much more numerous than non-chiral ones.
If we move on to subsets of molecules, the proportion of chirals ones (i.e. containing at least one chiral molecule) is even greater.
Selection processes on subsets of molecules that were overwhelmingly chiral made life appear in chiral form, because it was infinitely more probable.
There is no need to evoke a “special event” for the appearance of chirality if it is from the start more natural than non-chirality.
I box 🥊 I am right handed dominant but know how to use my left but not with as high dexterity but i work on it. I stand southpaw leading with my right meaning my power hand is my left. I am so proficient with both i can switch to orthodox. My styles are similar but change slightly between each other whether i lead left or right. Guess the same exact things can be different slightly depending on Left or Right lol. I guess its the universe version of “in English or in spanish”
In 1957 the violation of parity was shown by Chien-Shiung Wu , implying even the mirror image of a lone atom might not exist let alone the mirror image of any life form.
I think the space stuff suits you
On the other hand...... everything in the Universe spins and spirals. Would be interesting to know if and how much molecular spin, chirality and homochirality extrapolates to the left/right symmetry of just about every living complex organism. Could help explain the lack of one-handed single-footed cyclopes with a unicorn horn protruding from its head between its eye and single ear.
Howdy wonderful people 😊
The universe created everything just to argue with itself about which handedness is right
Intriguing!
Does that mean that ancient people had a better understanding sorta of things going on? Are left handed and right handed people fundamentally different?
It seems like one of those things that was learned and forgotten origin from long before.
My theory has always been that Chirality was caused by one of the precursors for life, coming into existence, due to a freekishly unlikely event. If you have a cocktail of organic compounds, what is the likelyhood that a strand of RNA will just contruct itself? It requires that millions of atoms just meet in exactly the right orientation to form a viable strand of RNA. Once formed, this one single strand of RNA will then self duplicate. In due course you'll have a veritable ocean of the stuff. ALL with the same chirality as that one fatefully produced molecule. All life could then evolve from this one freek event. But since all this RNA has the same chirality, then all the proteins, sugars and other organic compounds, built from it have their own specific chirality.
This would mean that the likelyhood of life existing elsewhere might be far less likely than we realise.
We're all just kind of holding our breath right now. between Fermi thought experiments and our growing mountains of observational data,, I'm personally starting to become convinced that this universe wanted a live audience that was only *just* smart enough to appreciate all the art in space and then blow themselves up. All these fancy systems that work together seamlessly and we're hoping and praying that ATLEAST the basic microbiologic building blocks of life have a chance of occuring again. WHERES THE PARTY 😭
I was born Left Handed but my Mom cut off the tip of my middle finger in a car door when I was 5 & had to learn how to do everything with my right hand....
ever wondered why we humans all look so incredibly diverse, aesthetically as well as genetically?
while all other species we know off almost look the same?
Id bet Chirality and penroses quantum super radiance are hints to each others implications in cellular functions.
Most tornadoes spin clockwise.
Isnt that because most of them occur in the northern hemisphere?
Most, not All.
This theory may explain the differences between right and left molecules in biological terms. However, from chemical point of view, it should be considered that some left or right molecules are easily obtained according to chemical reaction and the respective conditions. Thus, it is not a separation aspect but an energetic minimization problem!
"We're talking about sugars, proteins, amino acids, and even certain molecules."
Everything on your list is a molecule. Proteins are chains of linked amino acids.
But why is the membrane more permeable to one chirality than the other? The only way is for the membrane itself to be chiral, right? So then why is the membrane chiral? If this study is true, it just moves the question from "why are the proteins and sugars chiral" to "why is the membrane chiral". Unless somehow a non-chiral membrane is more permeable to one chirality of molecules, which would be very strange.
Yes. Questions.
It's easy to see how the mirror image of a shape can be different. Two parities and an absence of reflective symmetry. Easy peasy.
But how do you get from that to chirality? How can you look at a shape as arbitrary and complex as a protein and say, "this is left rather than right because..."? What are the criteria for deciding between two opposing categories, given that they must work for all shapes?
Is it that thing with polarized light? If so, how can this map in such a way that you can match left-handed with right-handed in general? Is the light partucularly sensitive to the parts you are interested in? Are they more _grabby_ then the rest, and does this specifically affect polarization?
This _seems_ like spin. You can predict it will be up or down, which is easy. But you can't tell without measuring, and you can't measure without first determining what up and down even are.
as i remember it indeed has to do with polarized light, circular polarized light to be specific. the handedness is which direction the light "turns" after passing through the stuff.
I would be inclined to go with polarised light causing the handedness, it seems to most logical to me.
I had read about something like that years ago. The study was about light being polarized in a determined way in sugar, if I remember correctly and that would "imprint" a chirality on proteins, I'm not sure anymore, I'm sorry. Maybe it had nothing to do with proteins, actually. I think it was about the chirality of sugar itself. Apparently it can rotate the plane of polarized light.
It's not the same. My bad.
fun fact the protein oriented to the left they are called levrogyre
if it was oriented to the right it would be called dextrogyre
Can left- and right-handed molecules transition into each other in the right environment?