#  Origins Graduate student Furkan Ozturk creates documentary "Cracking Chirality"  

 





March 08, 2024

 

 

Sort    Sort    "[Cracking Chirality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv9IAX75SKE)," a twelve-minute film from Chemistry Shorts™, explores how the essential molecules of life, like DNA, RNA, and proteins, acquired their homochiral structures and how magnetic rocks at the bottom of a prebiotic lake may have set the stage for life as we know it.

 





  



 

 



Sort    Sort    [](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv9IAX75SKE) 





  



 

 



Sort    Sort    Chirality is the idea that some molecules come in two mirror-image configurations. Despite having the exact same chemical compositions, their physical structures are different. These left-handed and right-handed molecules can have different properties and functions. Understanding how chiral molecules function differently is essential to chemical synthesis and medicine. But it also holds a curious question about early life: why are the nucleic acids that hold genetic information in all of life right-handed, while the amino acids that they encode left-handed?

 In "[Cracking Chirality ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv9IAX75SKE),” two Harvard University scientists, Dimitar Sasselov and S. Furkan Ozturk, present their exciting new findings: magnetized molecules found at the bottom of lakes on the primordial Earth may be the key to how important biological molecules crystallized and grew, tipping the scales from a 50-50 mixture of molecules to homochiral solutions made up of just one or the other. Their simple experimental setups, growing crystals on tiny magnetized plates, help provide a solution to an essential question about life itself that has plagued scientists for decades.

 





  



 

 



Sort    Sort    





  



 

 



Sort    Sort    “Cracking Chirality” is targeted towards high school and college students, and can be used as a starting point for discussions around the chemical origins of life, molecular chirality, electron spin, magnetism, and more. A full lesson plan with an experiment to accompany the film is available on the [Chemistry Shorts YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv9IAX75SKE).

 Click [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv9IAX75SKE) to watch the film now!

 





  



 

 





 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ 2024 ](/years/2024)
 
 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)