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Shout-out to the Mass Effect franchise for making this a key plot point and world building, we meet aliens that are the other chirality, we can't even share food, etc

The thalidomide situation is actually a little bit more complicated. With most chiral molecules, even if you produced a mixture of the left- and right-handed forms, you can separate the two and discard the one you don't want. But thalidomide is one of the exceptions, because, in the body, it can convert itself from one handedness to the other, meaning that even if you got rid of all the S-thalidomide during manufacturing, the body will still convert some of the R-thalidomide into S-thalidomide.

As a chemist, this is a really good introduction to chirality!

Wow! What an elegantly produced presentation! Every biochemistry teacher or professor should have this video ready to be used in class. What a clear, beautifully Illustrated production.

I’m in middle of writing a report/essay on chirality and the effects of chiral medications in history. Thank you for this video!

The best way to control mirror life is to not create it.  Those words hit hard.

Finally, a quality science video on Youtube. You don't know how hard it is to find good science videos these days.

It's kind of confusing at 5:15 where it's stated "if enantiomers don't share a plane of symmetry, then they are chiral." Enantiomers are chiral by definition, and this wording somewhat suggests there is a case where an enantiomer can be non-chiral.

I'm a thalidamide baby. On the Spectrum.
My sister, too. Birthspots, both of us.

Katarzyna Adamala, absolutely stunning work. I had a pleasure reading a few publications. You're making Poland proud!

This channel is so underrated

6:30ish  The video gives the impression that it is the left-handed or right-handed molecule that does the catalyzing: it is not, it is the enzyme that does.  

They appear to be showing an L- or D- amino acid that functions as an allosteric regulator.  If the amino acid is the correct enantiomer, then it will bind to the enzyme's allosteric site, and that will lead to a conformational change in the enzyme, activating it (the enzyme then has the correct shape to catalyze the chemical reaction).  The amino acid is not catalyzing the chemical reaction, the enzyme is.  The amnio acid just serves as the "key" that turns the enzyme "on" (or fails to turn the enzyme "on").

Yeah . . .this gets hairy quickly.  On the one hand it should be really easy to starve mirror cells out entirely.  But on the other, even if the mirror cells are dead, they still have mirror peptides and amino acid that will cause birth defects or cancer.  So letting mirror life die and rot is still a threat to the ecosystem.

This was definitely worthy of this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry 👏 👏.

getting organic chemistry flash back I actually loved orgo

God, I love this youtube channel. Hard to believe it's not way more popular

This is the most astonishing topic in Biology, and none shook me more than the idea of mirror life (a real life possibility of the Bizarro Superman enemy)...

Coming from a physics background, this reminds me of the matter/antimatter problem. Really interesting!

The crystals shown in the video are of RAO (riboaminooxazaline, or riboseaminooxazaline), which is a key molecule in the origin of life, as explained a bit below.

CISS – Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity
CISS works as follows.
1. It was found that chiral molecules can act as electron-spin selectors
As electrons move through a chiral molecule, the particular enantiomer can filter out one electron spin more readily than the other electron spin, leading to an asymmetry.

2. Then the reverse was also found to be the case: electron-spin can act as enantiomer selectors
A given electron spin can preferentially select one enantiomer over the other, leading to an asymmetry in enantiomers.

(Prebiotic) Magnetic Surfaces
Then we realized that since magnetic surfaces (such as a layer of magnetite on the floor of a shallow lake, on a prebiotic Earth) can impart a preferential electron-spin, so such surfaces can preferentially select one enantiomer over the other.  

Crystallization
CISS produced by (prebiotic) magnetic surfaces works better if the molecule crystalizes as conglomerates. That is, such that each individual crystal is homochiral. The original enantiomeric excess from crystallization can then be amplified basically to homochirality among the system of crystals if recrystallization occurs.

Prebiotic Homochirality Spreads from RAO->Nucleotides->Amino Acids->Network
A chiral molecule the crystalizes in homochiral crystals, and is of much interest in regard to the origin of life, is RAO (riboaminooxazaline, or riboseaminooxazaline). It is key. If its right-handed form becomes homochiral then that could lead to homochirality in nucleotides (i.e., D-nucleotides), and homochirality in D-nucleotides could lead to homochirality in amino acids (i.e., L-amino acids*), and homochirality in L-amino acids could then feedback and spread homochirality throughout the entire metabolic network.

A couple papers that deal with prebiotic CISS
1) Life’s homochirality: Across a prebiotic network.  S. Furkan Ozturk and Dimitar D. Sasselov.  PNAS.  August 19, 2025. 122 (34) e2505126122
2) Origin of biological homochirality by crystallization of an RNA precursor on a magnetic surface.  S. Furkan Oztur, Ziwei Liu, John D. Sutherland, and Dimitar D. Sasselov.  Science Advances.  7 Jun 2023.  Vol 9, Issue 23.  

A couple good YouTube videos to watch:
1) "Furkan Öztürk | A new spin on the origin of biological homochirality" on the channel Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe. Posted May 14, 2024
2) "Origins of homochirality & chemistry in deep sea supercritical CO2 - Furkan Ozturk - Shotaro Tagawa” on the channel “PCE3 Prebiotic Chemistry”  (PCE3 stands for Prebiotic Chemistry & Early Earth Environments) Posted July 20, 2023.

*This would take more space to explain, but D-nucleotides preferentially select L-amino acids.  As one example, see the paper Stereoselectivity of Aminoacyl-RNA Loop-Closing Ligation