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Calcium Found Key to Life's Molecular Chirality Formation

Life Sciences and Bio Pharma

Business Honor
28 March, 2025

A study reveals calcium's role in shaping molecular chirality, offering new insights into life's origins and biopharma.

Research conducted by scientists at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Science, has uncovered a new, previously unrecognized role for calcium in creating the earliest molecular forms of life, and it has far-reaching implications for life sciences and biopharma. The research explains how the effects of calcium ions may have controlled the chirality of molecules, a key step towards life's evolution.

Chirality or "handedness” is a characteristic of the molecules that appear in two forms that are mirror images of one another. On Earth, the DNA contains right-handed sugars, and proteins contain left-handed amino acids, and this phenomenon goes by the term homochirality. Molecular orientation specificity is required for life but has been one of the biggest enigmas to scientists trying to understand the origin of life.

Scientists employed the molecule tartaric acid (TA) with two chiral centers to determine the extent that early Earth conditions would influence the polymerization of molecules. They discovered that calcium significantly influenced the polymerization of TA molecules. In the absence of calcium, homochiral left- or right-handed TA polymerized into polyesters, but where mixtures of the two types of chirality existed, they could not polymerize. By the addition of calcium, this was reversed so that the mixed types could polymerize but the pure types were inhibited.

The results indicate that calcium might have been instrumental in the development of homochiral polymers, which could have been some of the first molecular building blocks of life, perhaps even earlier than RNA or DNA. The research presents a new direction in life sciences, suggesting that non-biomolecules such as polyesters might have helped bring about the emergence of life.

These findings are not just relevant to the beginnings of life but may also guide the design of new biopharmaceuticals through analysis of how the chirality of molecules impacts drug discovery and molecular recognition. With continued progress in the life sciences, this research sheds more light on how quite uncomplicated molecules drive the sophistication of life.