While humans have an esthetic liking for symmetry in everything, nature prefers asymmetric, single-handed forms when it comes to amino acids—the building blocks of proteins, and, by extension, all ...

Four billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than it does today, devoid of life and covered by a vast ocean. Over the course of millions of years, in that primordial soup, life emerged.

Using quantum chemical methods, a team of researchers led by Dr. Matthias Granold and Professor Bernd Moosmann of the Institute of Pathobiochemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz solved one ...

All biological amino acids on Earth appear exclusively in their left-handed form, but the reason underlying this observation is elusive. Recently, scientists uncovered new clues about the cosmic ...

A pore smaller than one nanometer reads peptide sequences amino acid by amino acid, pinpointing single-site Alzheimer's mutations and modifications with single-residue resolution.

It is a truth universally acknowledged in chemical synthesis that a molecule in posession of multiple stereocenters must be difficult to make. But the combined abilities of biochemistry and radical ...