scholarly journals Attrition-induced spontaneous chiral amplification of the γ polymorphic modification of glycine

CrystEngComm ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 1513-1517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arkadii V. Tarasevych ◽  
Alexander E. Sorochinsky ◽  
Valery P. Kukhar ◽  
Loïc Toupet ◽  
Jeanne Crassous ◽  
...  

Glycine is the simplest achiral amino acid that undergoes spontaneous mirror symmetry and controlled deracemization in its γ-polymorphic modification.

Symmetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1388
Author(s):  
William Bock ◽  
Enrique Peacock-López

The origin of biological homochirality—defined as the preference of biological systems for only one enantiomer—has widespread implications in the study of chemical evolution and the origin of life. The activation—polymerization—epimerization—depolymerization (APED) model is a theoretical model originally proposed to describe chiral symmetry breaking in a simple dimerization system. It is known that the model produces chiral and chemical oscillations for certain system parameters, in particular, the preferential formation of heterochiral polymers. In order to investigate the effect of higher oligomers, our model adds trimers, tetramers, and pentamers. We report sustained oscillations of all chemical species and the enantiomeric excess for a wide range of parameter sets as well as the periodic chiral amplification of a small initial enantiomeric excess to a nearly homochiral state.


2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (23) ◽  
pp. 11159-11164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uri Hananel ◽  
Assaf Ben-Moshe ◽  
Haim Diamant ◽  
Gil Markovich

Symmetry plays a crucial part in our understanding of the natural world. Mirror symmetry breaking is of special interest as it is related to life as we know it. Studying systems which display chiral amplification, therefore, could further our understanding of symmetry breaking in chemical systems, in general, and thus also of the asymmetry in Nature. Here, we report on strong chiral amplification in the colloidal synthesis of intrinsically chiral lanthanide phosphate nanocrystals, measured via circularly polarized luminescence. The amplification involves spontaneous symmetry breaking into either left- or right-handed nanocrystals below a critical temperature. Furthermore, chiral tartaric acid molecules in the solution direct the amplified nanocrystal handedness through a discontinuous transition between left- and right-handed excess. We analyze the observations based on the statistical thermodynamics of critical phenomena. Our results demonstrate how chiral minerals with high enantiopurity can form in a racemic aqueous environment.


2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (17) ◽  
pp. 2292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Azeroual ◽  
Jamie Surprenant ◽  
Thomas D. Lazzara ◽  
Marta Kocun ◽  
Ye Tao ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
M.K. Lamvik ◽  
L.L. Klatt

Tropomyosin paracrystals have been used extensively as test specimens and magnification standards due to their clear periodic banding patterns. The paracrystal type discovered by Ohtsuki1 has been of particular interest as a test of unstained specimens because of alternating bands that differ by 50% in mass thickness. While producing specimens of this type, we came across a new paracrystal form. Since this new form displays aligned tropomyosin molecules without the overlaps that are characteristic of the Ohtsuki-type paracrystal, it presents a staining pattern that corresponds to the amino acid sequence of the molecule.


Author(s):  
A. J. Tousimis

The elemental composition of amino acids is similar to that of the major structural components of the epithelial cells of the small intestine and other tissues. Therefore, their subcellular localization and concentration measurements are not possible by x-ray microanalysis. Radioactive isotope labeling: I131-tyrosine, Se75-methionine and S35-methionine have been successfully employed in numerous absorption and transport studies. The latter two have been utilized both in vitro and vivo, with similar results in the hamster and human small intestine. Non-radioactive Selenomethionine, since its absorption/transport behavior is assumed to be the same as that of Se75- methionine and S75-methionine could serve as a compound tracer for this amino acid.


Author(s):  
Yoichi Ishida ◽  
Hideki Ichinose ◽  
Yutaka Takahashi ◽  
Jin-yeh Wang

Layered materials draw attention in recent years in response to the world-wide drive to discover new functional materials. High-Tc superconducting oxide is one example. Internal interfaces in such layered materials differ significantly from those of cubic metals. They are often parallel to the layer of the neighboring crystals in sintered samples(layer plane boundary), while periodically ordered interfaces with the two neighboring crystals in mirror symmetry to each other are relatively rare. Consequently, the atomistic features of the interface differ significantly from those of cubic metals. In this paper grain boundaries in sintered high-Tc superconducting oxides, joined interfaces between engineering ceramics with metals, and polytype interfaces in vapor-deposited bicrystal are examined to collect atomic information of the interfaces in layered materials. The analysis proved that they are not neccessarily more complicated than that of simple grain boundaries in cubic metals. The interfaces are majorly layer plane type which is parallel to the compound layer. Secondly, chemical information is often available, which helps the interpretation of the interface atomic structure.


Author(s):  
Hamish L. Fraser

The topic of strain and lattice parameter measurements using CBED is discussed by reference to several examples. In this paper, only one of these examples is referenced because of the limitation of length. In this technique, scattering in the higher order Laue zones is used to determine local lattice parameters. Work (e.g. 1) has concentrated on a model strained-layer superlattice, namely Si/Gex-Si1-x. In bulk samples, the strain is expected to be tetragonal in nature with the unique axis parallel to [100], the growth direction. When CBED patterns are recorded from the alloy epi-layers, the symmetries exhibited by the patterns are not tetragonal, but are in fact distorted from this to lower symmetries. The spatial variation of the distortion close to a strained-layer interface has been assessed. This is most readily noted by consideration of Fig. 1(a-c), which show enlargements of CBED patterns for various locations and compositions of Ge. Thus, Fig. 1(a) was obtained with the electron beam positioned in the center of a 5Ge epilayer and the distortion is consistent with an orthorhombic distortion. When the beam is situated at about 150 nm from the interface, the same part of the CBED pattern is shown in Fig. 1(b); clearly, the symmetry exhibited by the mirror planes in Fig. 1 is broken. Finally, when the electron beam is positioned in the center of a 10Ge epilayer, the CBED pattern yields the result shown in Fig. 1(c). In this case, the break in the mirror symmetry is independent of distance form the heterointerface, as might be expected from the increase in the mismatch between 5 and 10%Ge, i.e. 0.2 to 0.4%, respectively. From computer simulation, Fig.2, the apparent monocline distortion corresponding to the 5Ge epilayer is quantified as a100 = 0.5443 nm, a010 = 0.5429 nm and a001 = 0.5440 nm (all ± 0.0001 nm), and α = β = 90°, γ = 89.96 ± 0.02°. These local symmetry changes are most likely due to surface relaxation phenomena.


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