title: The Life Story of Hydrogen Peroxide III: Chirality and Physical Effects at the Dawn of Life.
abstract: It is a remarkable observed fact that all life on Earth is homochiral, its biology using exclusively the D-enantiomer of ribose, the sugar moiety of the ribonucleic acids, and the L-enantiomers of the chiral amino acids. Motivated by concurrent work that elaborates further the role of hydrogen peroxide in providing an oscillatory drive for the RNA world (Ball & Brindley 2015a, J. R. Soc. Interface 12, 20150366, and Ball & Brindley 2015b, this journal, in press), we reappraise the structure and physical properties of this small molecule within this context. Hydrogen peroxide is the smallest, simplest molecule to exist as a pair of non-superimposable mirror images, or enantiomers, a fact which leads us to develop the hypothesis that its enantiospecific interactions with ribonucleic acids led to enantioselective outcomes. We propose a mechanism by which these chiral interactions may have led to amplification of D-ribonucleic acids and extinction of L-ribonucleic acids.
authors.affiliation: Mathematical Sciences Institute and Research School of Chemistry, The Australian National University, Canberra, 2602, Australia. Rowena.Ball@anu.edu.au.
authors.forename: Rowena
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3551-3012
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ball
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. J.Brindley@leeds.ac.uk.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brindley
mesh_terms: D006861:Hydrogen Peroxide / Q000737:chemistry*; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D008956:Models, Chemical; D000069497:Origin of Life; D010084:Oxidation-Reduction; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D013237:Stereoisomerism
chemical_list: D012313:RNA; D006861:Hydrogen Peroxide
keywords: Axial chirality; Biological homochirality; Hydrogen peroxide; RNA world