The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to French scientist Henri B. Kagan and Japan's Kenso Soai for solving the chemical mystery of life's asymmetry.
Chirality, the property that gives molecules a left‑handed or right‑handed form, is fundamental to life. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, exist in two mirror‑image versions, yet biological systems use only one.
The laureates demonstrated that a simple chemical reaction could spontaneously generate an excess of one enantiomer, revealing the possible origin of biological homochirality.
Their groundbreaking work not only solves a long‑standing puzzle but also opens new avenues for the design of asymmetric catalysts and the synthesis of drugs with higher efficacy.
In the metaverse, avatars can now visit a virtual reconstruction of the labs where the key experiments were performed, allowing audiences to witness the subtle dance of molecules that gave rise to life.
