Left-handed Life - and Neutron Stars!

Just saw a news story this morning: one group of researchers believes
that they have found the explanation of why life favors one of the two
stereoisomers of its basic molecules: radiation from neutron stars is
circularly polarized, so amino acids synthesized in space in racemic
form are differentially destroyed by this radiation, and thus they are
brought to Earth by meteorites in the form used by life here.

John Savard

On Apr 7, 11:14�am, Quadibloc wrote:
Just saw a news story this morning: one group of researchers believes
that they have found the explanation of why life favors one of the two
stereoisomers of its basic molecules: radiation from neutron stars is
circularly polarized, so amino acids synthesized in space in racemic
form are differentially destroyed by this radiation, and thus they are
brought to Earth by meteorites in the form used by life here.

John Savard

I don't think we know anything about the distribution of sterioisomers
anywhere except here on earth.

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 10:58:47 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

I don't think we know anything about the distribution of sterioisomers
anywhere except here on earth.

Actually, the Solar System. It has been known for some time that there
is a L-biased imbalance in ancient amino acids found in meteorites. That
has been taken as evidence for some physical (as opposed to biotic)
mechanism. This new research seems to be suggesting one possible
physical mechanism.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Apr 7, 8:18*pm, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 10:58:47 -0700 (PDT), "

wrote:
I don't think we know anything about the distribution of sterioisomers
anywhere except here on earth.

Actually, the Solar System. It has been known for some time that there
is a L-biased imbalance in ancient amino acids found in meteorites. That
has been taken as evidence for some physical (as opposed to biotic)
mechanism. This new research seems to be suggesting one possible
physical mechanism.

It is a bit odd that this is in the news now though. There have been
reports of strong circularly polarised light in star forming regions
before together with the long standing hypothesis that it may explain
local chirality imbalances. eg.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...ba185be1105f80

(abstract is free access - full text needs a university library or
similar subscription)

Here is a free access paper from 2000 detailing observations of the
star forming region NGC6334 in circularly poalrised light and their
potential implications.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/c... filetype=.pdf

Hope the links survive intact.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown wrote in
:

Thanks for the links Martin. Interesting stuff.

I am amazed at what you are able to dig! You seem to be some kind of oxygen
breathing wikipedia. Chirality was, in some ways, the mother of all bio
mysteries when I was a student. Brings back nice memories.

I also remember fondly the nice pointers you gave me about superresolution,
beyond Nyquist, a couple of years ago.

Have you seen this

http://www.commsp.ee.ic.ac.uk/~lbaboula/

and this, for another type of superresolution?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture06854.html

The concept has already led to one Nobel prize. I wouldn't be surprised if
it led to more in the future! It has the potential of having for
astophysics the impact PCR had for biotech.



http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...B6V3S-43G530K-
N&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view =c&_acct=C000050221&_
version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0a484aa9cbf 1bc805bba185be1105f80

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/c...query?2000ASPC.
.213..355M&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper= YES&type=PRINTER&
amp;filetype=.pdf