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Asymmetric molecules are always chiral. [6] The following table shows some examples of chiral and achiral molecules, with the Schoenflies notation of the point group of the molecule. In the achiral molecules, X and Y (with no subscript) represent achiral groups, whereas X R and X S or Y R and Y S represent enantiomers.
Conversely, a mirror image of an achiral object, such as a sphere, cannot be distinguished from the object. A chiral object and its mirror image are called enantiomorphs (Greek, "opposite forms") or, when referring to molecules, enantiomers. A non-chiral object is called achiral (sometimes also amphichiral) and can be superposed on its mirror ...
An achiral environment does not differentiate the molecular twins whereas a chiral environment does distinguish the left-handed version from the right-handed version. Human body, a classic bio-environment, is inherently handed as it is filled with chiral discriminators like amino acids, enzymes, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, etc.
Enantiotopic groups are identical and indistinguishable except in chiral environments. For instance, the CH 2 hydrogens in ethanol (CH 3 CH 2 OH) are normally enantiotopic, but can be made different (diastereotopic) if combined with a chiral center, for instance by conversion to an ester of a chiral carboxylic acid such as lactic acid, or if coordinated to a chiral metal center, or if ...
Homochirality is a uniformity of chirality, or handedness.Objects are chiral when they cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, the left and right hands of a human are approximately mirror images of each other but are not their own mirror images, so they are chiral.
For example, the molecules of cholesteric liquid crystals are randomly positioned but macroscopically they exhibit a helicoidal orientational order. Other examples of structurally chiral materials can be fabricated either as stacks of uniaxial laminas or using sculptured thin films .
In stereochemistry, prochiral molecules are those that can be converted from achiral to chiral in a single step. [1] [2] An achiral species which can be converted to a chiral in two steps is called proprochiral. [2] If two identical substituents are attached to an sp 3-hybridized atom, the descriptors pro-R and pro-S are used to distinguish ...
Molecules that cannot be superimposed on their own mirror image are said to be chiral; as the asymmetric carbon is the center of this chirality, it is also known as a chiral carbon. As an example, malic acid (HOOC−CH 2 −CH(OH)−COOH) has 4 carbon atoms but just one of them is asymmetric. The asymmetric carbon atom, bolded in the formula ...