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Smectite clays are hydrated layer silicates that, like micas, occur naturallyin abundance. Importantly, they have readily modifiable interlayer spaces thatprovide excellent sites for nanochemistry. Vermiculite is one such smectiteclay and in the presence of small chain-length alkyl-NH3Cl ions, formssensitive, 1-D ordered model clay systems with expandable nano-pore inter-layerregions. These inter-layers readily adsorb organic molecules. N-propyl NH3Clvermiculite clay gels were used to determine the adsorption of alanine, lysineand histidine by chiral HPLC. The results show that during reaction with freshvermiculite interlayers, significant chiral enrichment of either L- andD-enantiomers occurs depending on the amino acid. Chiral enrichment of thesupernatant solutions is up to about 1% per pass. In contrast, addition to clayinterlayers already reacted with amino acid solutions resulted in little or nochange in D/L ratio during the time of the experiment. Adsorption of smallamounts of amphiphilic organic molecules in clay inter-layers is known toproduce Layer-by-Layer or Langmuir-Blodgett films. Moreover atomisticsimulations show that self-organization of organic species in clay interlayersis important. These non-centrosymmetric, chirally active nanofilms may causeclays to act subsequently as chiral amplifiers, concentrating organic materialfrom dilute solution and having different adsorption energetics for D- andL-enantiomers. The additional role of clays in RNA oligimerization alreadypostulated by Ferris and others, together with the need for the organization ofamphiphilic molecules and lipids noted by Szostak and others, suggests thatsuch chiral separation by clays in lagoonal environments at normal biologicaltemperatures might also have played a significant role in the origin ofbiochirality.

Selective Adsorption and Chiral Amplification of Amino Acids in Vermiculite Clay -Implications for the origin of biochirality