by Staff Writers York UK (SPX) Jan 26, 2012 Organic chemists at
the University of York have made a significant advance towards
establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form
the building blocks of life. A team led by Dr Paul Clarke in the
Department of Chemistry at York have re-created a process which
could have occurred in the prebiotic world. Working with
colleagues at the University of Nottingham, they have made the
first step towards showing how simple sugars -threose and
erythrose-developed. The research is published in Organic and
Biomolecular Chemistry. All biological molecules have an ability
to exist as left-handed forms or right-handed forms. All sugars
in biology are made up of the right-handed form of molecules and
yet all the amino acids that make up the peptides and proteins
are made up of the left-handed form. The researchers found using
simple left-handed amino acids to catalyse the formation of
sugars resulted in the production of predominately right-handed
form of sugars. It