We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential and the environment is modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. We carefully analyze different time-scales appearing in the resulting master equation at both...

We describe the practical synthetic route for (2S)-7-methoxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-2-naphthylamine 1(2S)-2-amino-7-methoxytetraline; (S)-AMT]. (2R)-2-(3-Methoxybenzyl)succinic acid [(R)-1] was obtained by the optical resolution of 2-(3-methoxybenzyl)succinic acid (1) as the salt of (1R,2S)-2-(benzylamino)cyclohexylmethanol (7), and (R)-1 was converted to the optically active (2S)-7-methoxy-1,2,3,4...

Meteorites may have contributed amino acids to the prebiotic Earth, affecting the global ratio of right-handed to left-handed (D/ L) molecules. We calculate D/ L ratios for seven biological, α-hydrogen, protein amino acids over a variety of plausible parent body thermal histories, based on meteorite evidence and asteroid modeling. We show that amino acids in meteorites do not necessarily underg...

Silver(I) salts mediated stereospecific transformation of optically active propargylamines to axially chiral allenes with excellent enantioselectivities (17 examples with 96-99% ee; one substrate with 91% ee) without subsequent racemization.

A novel proton acceptor coupling reagent shows superiority to those described previously. The oxygen in the carbocation moiety confers more solubility to the reagent. Furthermore, it enhances coupling yields and decreases racemization, allowing the use of 1 equiv of base.

Exposure of food proteins to certain processing conditions induces two major chemical changes: racemization of all L-amino acids (LAAs) to D-amino acids (DAAs) and concurrent formation of cross-linked amino acids such as lysinoalanine (LAL). The diet contains both processing-induced and naturally-formed DAA. The latter include those found in microorganisms, plants, and marine invertebrates. Rac...