Comments on “Mirror Symmetry Breaking” of the Centrosymmetric CaCO3 Crystals with Amino Acids

✍ Scribed by Meir Lahav; Leslie Leiserowitz

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 883 KB
• Volume: 47
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-8249
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.200703491

✦ Synopsis

Symmetry violation: Recent results by Tremel and co‐workers on the phase selection of calcium carbonate through the chirality of adsorbed amino acids appear to provide a deterministic route to “mirror‐symmetry breaking”, which may have ramifications for the emergence of homochirality on Earth. In our view, however, the crystallization experiments violate basic rules of symmetry and we suspect the presence of chemical, biological, or other homochiral or achiral contaminants in the system.