"How did life originate and why were left-handed molecules selected for
its architecture?" This question of high public and interdisciplinary
scientific interest is the central theme of this book. It is widely
known that in processes triggering the origin of life on Earth, the
equal occurrence, the parity between left-handed amino acids and their
right-handed mirror images, was violated. The balance was inevitably
tipped to the left - as a result of which life's proteins today
exclusively implement the left form of amino acids.
Written in an engaging style, this book describes how the basic building
blocks of life, the amino acids, formed. After a comprehensible
introduction to stereochemistry, the author addresses the inherent
property of amino acids in living organisms, namely the preference for
left-handedness. What was the cause for the violation of parity of amino
acids in the emergence of life on Earth? All the fascinating models
proposed by physicists, chemists and biologist are vividly presented
including the scientific conflicts. The author describes the attempt to
verify any of those models with the chirality module of the ROSETTA
mission, a probe built and launched with the mission to land on a comet
and analyse whether there are chiral organic compounds that could have
been brought to the Earth by cometary impacts.
A truly interdisciplinary astrobiology book, "Amino Acids and the
Asymmetry of Life" will fascinate students, researchers and all readers
with backgrounds in natural sciences.
With a foreword by Henri B. Kagan.
