In brief
The Chemistry Nobel has gone to two scientists for answering a long‑standing question about molecular chirality in living organisms. Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai demonstrated why biological amino acids employ a single, left‑handed form. This breakthrough clarifies how life’s building blocks maintain a uniform hand‑edness and could influence future drug design. Their work marks a milestone in understanding the chemical basis of biological asymmetry.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to French scientist Henri B. Kagan and Japan's Kenso Soai for solving the long‑standing puzzle of why life prefers one mirror‑image version of chiral molecules.
The Nobel Committee noted that molecules such as the amino acids that compose proteins are chiral, meaning they exist in two mirror‑image forms. However, biological systems exclusively use only one of these forms. Kagan and Soai have now expanded our understanding of why this selective use occurs.
This discovery fills a crucial gap in our knowledge of how life’s molecular components achieve uniformity, paving the way for new insights into drug design, synthetic chemistry, and the origins of life.
