Herman F. Mark Polymer Research Institute, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
Orig Life Evol Biosph. 2010 Feb;40(1):111-8. doi: 10.1007/s11084-009-9180-7. Epub 2009 Nov 13.
Strong arguments can be found in the literature addressed to the question of the origin of homochirality in life, supporting the hypothesis that primordial life could have evolved in both homochiral forms and that early on when life was still rarely found, random events led to the survival of only one of these living mirror images. This proposal is an alternative to the generally accepted view that small enantiomeric excesses of biologically important molecules were amplified to homochirality prior to life's origin. Acceptance of the possibility of "two equal runners" leads to the importance of research investigations on routes to formation of ensembles of racemic mixtures of isotactic biologically interesting polymers, supramolecular entities and aggregates.
在探讨生命手性起源的文献中,可以找到有力的论据,支持这样一种假说,即原始生命可能以两种手性形式进化,而在生命还很少见的早期,随机事件导致只有一种镜像形式的生命得以存活。这一观点与普遍接受的观点形成了对比,即生物重要分子的小对映体过量在生命起源之前被放大到手性。接受“两个平等竞争者”的可能性,使得研究形成等规混合物的途径变得重要,这些混合物包括具有生物意义的聚合物、超分子实体和聚集体。