The method could hasten the development of drugs, pesticides, cosmetics and optical technologies while lowering costs. Scott R. Gilbertson, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry in Arts and Sciences, has developed a catalog of building blocks used to make selective catalysts that bring about reactions forming important chiral molecules. Molecules such as DNA, an array of hormones and proteins, and many other biologically active molecules can exist in two forms that are non-superimposable mirror images of each other. These are described as chiral.
Human hands are chiral objects.
Each hand is a mirror image of the other, but the left cannot be superimposed onto the right. Each twin molecule of a chiral pair is called an enantiomer. While each enantiomer shares with its mirror image identical physical properties, such as boiling and melting points, each one can be markedly different from its twin. In the compound carvone, for instance, one enantiomer smells like spearmint while the other smells like caraway. In terms of pharmaceutical applications, one enantiomer can have a beneficial therapeutic effect while the other can have no effect or even a grievous one.