English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

9UESTIONS about the stereochemistry of life processes provided the grounds for a fascinating and protracted debate over mechanist and vitalist anations of organic phenomena during the second half of the nineteenth cen- tury. Chemists discovered that many molecules come in alternative structural arrangements that are not superposable on their mirror images; the relationship is identical to that between a right and left hand. The physical and chemical proper- ties of the alternative forms, the enantiomers, were believed to be identical in all respects except the three-dimensional arrangement of their component atoms., At the same time, microbiologists and biochemists discovered a peculiar feature of the chemistry of life. They knew that when the above-mentioned molecular types were produced abiotically, the outcome was always a mixture of the two enantiomers, that is, a racemic product was formed. But when these processes were mediated by living organisms or by substances of biological origin, the outcome was radically different. Biochemical transformations would start with racemic reactants and then yield only one of the alternative enantiomeric forms of the product, not both, as would be expected if the transformation were sym- metric. This stereochemical specificity, the property of discriminating between the alternative enantiomers, was viewed by physicists, chemists, and biologists alike as one of the most striking features of biological chemistry. Throughout the late nineteenth century, a number of influential, and not so influential, scientists attempted to explain this peculiar "handedness," or chiral- ity, of biological chemistry. They often did so independently of one another, and more often than not, this problem fell outside their respective areas of profes- sional expertise. These facts attest to the perception of a generally unsettling problem. The issue was not merely a scientific one but one charged with meta- physical implications: Some scientists claimed that the laws of chemistry and physics were insufficient to account for the phenomenon, and they sought a

Stereochemistry and the Nature of Life: Mechanist, Vitalist, and Evolutionary Perspectives