An important discovery has been made with respect to the mystery
of “handedness” in biomolecules. Researchers led by Sandra
Pizzarello, a research professor at Arizona State University,
found that some of the possible abiotic precursors to the origin
of life on Earth have been shown to carry “handedness” in a
larger number than previously thought. The work is being
published in this week’s Early Edition of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. The paper is titled, “Molecular
asymmetry in extraterrestrial chemistry: Insights from a
pristine meteorite,” and is co-authored by Pizzarello and
Yongsong Huang and Marcelo Alexandre, of Brown University.
Pizzarello, in ASU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
worked with Huang and Alexandre in studying the organic
materials of a special group of meteorites that contain among a
variety of compounds, amino acids that have identical
counterparts in terrestrial biomolecules. These meteorites are
fragments of asteroids that are about the same age as t