Chemists at UC Davis are using catalysts (shown in gray spheres) to make organic compounds (blue sticks) with a specific chirality, or “handedness.” Most biological molecules are chiral, including ...

The recognition of chirality in bioactive molecules is as old as modern organic chemistry itself. Pioneering work by Jean-Baptiste Biot, Louis Pasteur, Emil Fischer, and J. vant Hoff established ...

Benjamin List and David W. C. MacMillan take home the prize for revolutionizing chiral organic synthesis with small-molecule catalysts Asymmetric organocatalysis is a widely used technique and ...

In nature, organic molecules are either left- or right-handed, but synthesizing molecules with a specific 'handedness' in a lab is hard to do. Make a drug or enzyme with the wrong 'handedness,' and it ...