Dissident remarks on the origin of optical activity. An intrabiological explanation.
The attempts to explain the origin of natural optical activity through external, extrabiological, agents, typically ionizing rays, i.e. as a purely incidental effect without deeper significance, have failed and should be abandoned. An alternative, intrabiological, Darwinian, explanation seeks to explain optical activity as a necessary phenomenon in early evolution. This explanation is based on the idea that organisms with the existing stereospecificity initially happened, by chance, to be more efficient than organisms with the opposite stereospecificity on independent grounds that have nothing to do with their stereospecificity. If cells based on L aminoacids are called L cells, it is to be assumed that cosmic bodies carrying L cells are about equally frequent as those carrying D cells.
D000596:Amino Acids; D005075:Biological Evolution; D007536:Isomerism; D008954:Models, Biological; D000069497:Origin of Life
D000596:Amino Acids