A Review on the Prebiotic Origin of Molecular Handedness
Abstract
This paper proposes a self-consistent framework for how molecular "handedness" (chirality) may have emerged before life began. Our central idea is that nature was never perfectly balanced to begin with: natural environments already carry tiny built-in preferences for one "handed" form of a molecule over its mirror image. Life's exclusive use of one handedness, we argue, was the outcome of long-term natural selection among large-molecule lineages shaped by these environmental preferences. Over immense stretches of geological time, even the tiniest bias gets multiplied again and again until it becomes overwhelming. Based on this framework, we distinguish between open natural systems on one hand, and controlled, closed laboratory systems on the other, and we identify a hidden assumption that has long shaped thinking in this field. We then place the work of Kagan and Soai in context: their experimental results are solid and reproducible, but the Nobel-related narrative that treats them as the origin story of life's handedness rests on a mismatch of conditions.
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BibTeX
@misc{liu2026review,
title = {{A Review on the Prebiotic Origin of Molecular Handedness}},
author = {Hui Liu},
howpublished = {Zenodo},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23632314},
url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23632314},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Review on the Prebiotic Origin of Molecular Handedness
AU - Hui Liu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/25
PB - Zenodo
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23632314
UR - https://zenodo.org/records/23632314
AB - This paper proposes a self-consistent framework for how molecular "handedness" (chirality) may have emerged before life began. Our central idea is that nature was never perfectly balanced to begin with: natural environments already carry tiny built-in preferences for one "handed" form of a molecule over its mirror image. Life's exclusive use of one handedness, we argue, was the outcome of long-term natural selection among large-molecule lineages shaped by these environmental preferences. Over immense stretches of geological time, even the tiniest bias gets multiplied again and again until it becomes overwhelming. Based on this framework, we distinguish between open natural systems on one hand, and controlled, closed laboratory systems on the other, and we identify a hidden assumption that has long shaped thinking in this field. We then place the work of Kagan and Soai in context: their experimental results are solid and reproducible, but the Nobel-related narrative that treats them as the origin story of life's handedness rests on a mismatch of conditions.
ER -