Everything is Chiral!

Tom Mueller’s Extra Virginity delved into the world of olive oil and the lives that flourish or disintegrate around it.  The book highlights how chemists are involved in the fight against and for the addition of regulations in the olive oil industry.  One such chemist, Alissa Mattei, has a flair for chirality and excitingly declares that “everything is chiral!”  


While I decidedly disagree with her on the matter that everything is chiral, I do believe that chirality can be found in everyday life.  First, you may be wondering what chirality is, so that you may discern whether my assessment is correct.  Chirality is a term that is used in chemistry that means the configuration or handedness (left or right) of an asymmetric, optically active chemical compound (Grazie dictionary.com!). This is probably one of the most important things about stereochemistry which was my FAVORITE part of organic chemistry.  No, stereochemistry isn’t the chemistry of an iPod or a boom-box, but it is the part of chemistry that deals with molecules in 3D space. We’ve all talked about stereochemistry, and it does make a difference in our everyday life, ever heard of the insidious trans-fat?  The ‘trans’ part doesn’t refer to a transmission or a trek across the country, it refers to the shape of the fat molecule.

Now, that is stereochemistry and chirality in a nutshell, but I must comment on the beauty of chirality.  To someone who doesn’t know about chirality, tons of molecules would appear to be identical; however, to the trained eye, seemingly identical molecules become left or right handed.  This makes significant differences in bio-organic molecules and how certain drugs may function.  For some drugs, the ‘right-handed’ molecule could cure an illness, but the ‘left-handed’ molecule could cause a different illness. Stereochemistry is definitely an important part of our everyday life.

Stereochemistry is definitely not a hard idea to grasp once you understand how to visualize 3D space. For me, it definitely helped to think of other things that are seemingly identical, but when you closely analyze them, they have small details in their orientation that make them different. An example that every person that has passed a 2^nd-grade art class would know is that scissors are “chiral.” Those bloody left-handed scissors you got stuck with were the bane of your six-year old existence, and scissors for a lefty could have developed into an irrational phobia.  Everyone who has taken an exam in White Hall knows that infamous row of left-handed desks.  Every left-handed person knows that on average they die earlier than their right-handed counterparts (this is disputed, but I frequently let my left-handed sister know of her ill-fated handedness). While chirality may be a fancier term that scientists use to describe left or right handed objects, it is a simple idea that we encounter on an everyday basis. 

What are some other object or examples of chirality in every day life?