Magnetism and Quantum Mechanics Could Explain This Enigmatic Property of Life

The mystery surrounding life's preference for specific forms of molecules, such as amino acids and sugars, which exist in two mirror-image forms but only one is utilized in living organisms, might finally be shedding light. Researchers from Empa and the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany have recently highlighted an unexpected phenomenon: the interaction between electric and magnetic fields could play a crucial role in this choice.


From Louis Pasteur to Nobel Prize winners like Pierre Curie, the question of the "homochirality" of biological molecules has been intriguing. These molecules, although chemically identical, adopt shapes that are mirror images of each other, called enantiomers. Why does life favor one form over the other? Potential answers remain speculative, despite their similar physicochemical properties.

The explanation may lie in the unique interaction between magnetic and electric fields. Recent experiments have shown that these fields could "discriminate" between the two forms of a molecule when they interact with specific metallic surfaces. By depositing chiral molecules on "islands" of magnetic cobalt arranged on a copper surface, researchers observed a marked preference for one of the enantiomeric forms, depending on the orientation of the applied magnetic field.

Furthermore, the transport of electrons through the molecules depends on their chirality in the presence of magnetized surfaces, filtering electrons according to their spin, a quantum property. This phenomenon, called Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS), shows that even individual molecules can exhibit this effect, although the underlying mechanisms remain a mystery.

These findings do not entirely answer the question of life's chirality posed by Vladimir Prelog, but they open a path toward understanding how chemical reactions catalyzed by surfaces, in the "primordial soup" of early Earth, could have favored the accumulation of a specific form of biomolecules. Thus, electric and magnetic fields may have played a decisive role in the emergence of life as we know it.