How to tell your left from your right
Colour changing nanoparticles identify amino acids
Scientists in China have developed a colour-changing tool to spot right-handed amino acids.
Most amino acids exist in two forms that are chemically identical but are mirror images of each other, like left and right hands. Left-handed amino acids play a key role in biological processes and are vital to life. It therefore makes sense to want to differentiate between left and right-handed versions.
To date, no single approach can discriminate between these mirror-image pairs, termed enantiomers, for all chiral amino acids. Put your hands together then for Baoxin Li and colleagues at Shaanxi Normal University, who have taken nanoparticle chiral recognition one step further and developed a colorimetric assay that detects right-handed enantiomers of chiral amino acids, and quantifies them too.
This article provides a link to coverage by Chemistry World.
Thanks for using Education in Chemistry. You can view one Education in Chemistry article per month as a visitor.
Register for Teach Chemistry for free, unlimited access
Registration is open to all teachers and technicians at secondary schools, colleges and teacher training institutions in the UK and Ireland.
Get all this, plus much more:
- unlimited access to resources, core practical videos and Education in Chemistry articles
- teacher well-being toolkit, personal development resources and online assessments
- applications for funding to support your lessons
Already a Teach Chemistry member? Sign in now.
Not eligible for Teach Chemistry? Sign up for a personal account instead, or you can also access all our resources with Royal Society of Chemistry membership.