The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded a £1.4m research grant to Professor Stefano Pagliara, University of Exeter, to lead a research collaboration with partners at the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen that investigates one of the greatest mysteries in biology: why all creatures on this planet use a distinct pattern of left or right-handed forms of their core molecular building blocks.
Just as our left and right hands are mirror images of each other that can't be superimposed, many molecules also have left- or right-handed forms, a phenomenon known as chirality. Chemical reactions conducted separately from biological processes produce an equal mix of the two forms, yet all the living organisms on Earth today have distinctive patterns of chirality. This is how one can tell the chemistry of life from other forms of chemical reactions. For example, the DNA in our cells is always of the right-handed form, while the amino acids that are strung together to make proteins are left-handed.
In this project, Professor Pagliara and Dr Ula Łapinska at the University of Exeter will work with colleagues at the University of Oxford, University of Aberdeen and Federal University of Paraná in Brazil. They will investigate how sugars and amino acids of different chirality can pass through different kinds of cell membranes. Membranes constitute the "bag" that encloses all cells and are made of fatty molecules called phospholipids. Membrane composition varies across the tree of life, some membrane variants may have selected for molecules of different chirality and over the course of evolution resulted in selection for life that only uses one stereochemical form.
Professor Pagliara said: "The research will be conducted as a series of interrelated experiments and studies at the collaborating universities. Together, we will explore the biophysical and biochemical determinants of stereochemical permeability selection across a variety of cellular membranes."
Dr Łapinska added: "Setting up new methods to perform these measurements has been a challenge, but we can now understand which molecules pass through membranes of different chemistries."
Dr Morimoto, with appointments at the University of Aberdeen and Federal University of Paraná, said: "I am very excited to bring mathematical modelling to this project to establish the physiochemical conditions where Darwinian selection can emerge kickstarting life."
"From a funder's perspective, we are thrilled to support testing of clever hypotheses that hold promise to help resolve a long-standing puzzle in the biological sciences," offered Dr Jon Kaye, program director at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. "Because the team will pursue a critical question about the origin and early evolution of life on Earth, the implications of this collaborative research may extend to understanding the prospects for life on other planets and moons."
Professor Richards, University of Oxford, concluded: "These investigations could reveal a solution to the long-standing mystery about what determined the 'handedness' of molecules inside living cells by providing a possible selective route to left- and right-handed molecules."
