Electroweak Bioenantioselection

This paper reviews evidence for the view that biomolecular chirality was determined not by chance but by the electroweak interaction. Other influences (such as the Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields, or circularly polarized light) are either falsely chiral or else even-handed on a time and space average, leaving the weak interaction as the only consistent universal chiral influence. Electroweak bioenantioselection could occur either through p-radiolysis or through the small parity-violating energy differences (PVED) between enantiomers. The PVED produces an electroweak enantiomeric excess of only 10-17, but this can be amplified to homochirality within 104 years by the powerful Kondepudi mechanism. Calculations of the PVED show that the natural L-amino acids are more stable than their »unnatural« n-enantiomers, and natural n-glyceraldehyde and D-deoxyribose are also PVED-stabilized. The PVED can also explain the observed 1% excess of l(-)-quartz, which, through pre-biotic mineral catalysis, could increase the electroweak enantiomeric excess to 10,4.