“Any man who, upon looking down at his bare feet, doesn't laugh, has either no sense of symmetry or no sense of humour” (Descartes, cf. Walker 1979)
Summary
The role of chirality in the theories that determine the origin of life are reemphasized—in particular the fact that almost all amino acids utilized in living systems are of thel type. Starting fromZ 0 interactions, I speculate on an explanation of the above fact in terms of quantum mechanical cooperative and condensation phenomena (possibly in terms of ane-n condensate where thee-n system has the same status as Cooper-pairing), which could give rise to second-order phase transitions (includingd tol transformations) below a critical temperatureT c. As a general rule,T c is a low temperature. From this, it is conceivable that the earth provided too hot a location for the production ofl amino acids. I suggest laboratory testing of these ideas by looking for the appropriate phase transitions.
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Salam, A. The role of chirality in the origin of life. J Mol Evol 33, 105–113 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02193624
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02193624