STOCKHOLM, Oct 7 — France’s Henri Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai today won the Nobel chemistry prize for solving the mystery of why only one version of some molecules’ mirror-image forms appears in nature, a discovery decisive for the development of pharmaceuticals.
The pair were honoured “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis”, the jury said.
Like hands, all amino acids exist as two mirrored variants, but only one of them is found in the proteins in the body’s cells.
The other is rarely found in nature, a phenomenon known as “homochirality”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained.
Chemists have long wondered how that process occurs, and the two Nobel laureates’ discoveries have “enabled chemists to drive chemical reactions that lead to homochirality”, the jury said.
