Biological chirality: the functional asymmetry of life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30973/inventio/2022.18.45/3Keywords:
chirality, biological information, dynamical systems, main tenet of molecular biologyAbstract
Chirality is a geometric property in objects that exist in two versions oriented in space as a reflection. The typical case is the hands, since the reflection of the left hand results in a right hand, and vice versa. In chemistry, reactions that generate chiral compounds do so in equivalent amounts of left and right molecules. In living systems, during protein synthesis, the cellular machinery only uses left amino acids, while the main metabolic pathways favor the use of right carbohydrates. In this paper we address the concept of chirality and show the evidence to consider it a characteristic that optimizes the flow of information in living systems.
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Copyright (c) 2005 Hugo Iván Cruz Rosas, María Eugenia Noble Terán, José Manuel Cruz, Thomas Buhse
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