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Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Kagan and Soai
BBC • • general
Key Points:
- The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai for solving the long-standing mystery of life's molecular asymmetry, known as chirality.
- They discovered how nature selectively produces one mirror image form of molecules, such as amino acids, which is essential for life, unlike laboratory reactions that typically create equal mixtures of both forms.
- Their work enables the design of chemical reactions that favor the production of the biologically active version of molecules, crucial for drug development since different mirror images can have vastly different effects in the body.
- Kagan pioneered methods to manipulate chemical reactions to increase one mirror image's prevalence in 1986, while Soai achieved the first homochiral reaction producing only the desired molecular form in 1995 and fully controlled it by 2003.
- The Nobel Committee highlighted their achievement as a groundbreaking solution to how homochirality can emerge spontaneously, a feat previously only observed in living organisms.
