By Jade Izaguirre
Have you ever noticed that when you look in the mirror and raise your right hand that your reflection raises it’s left hand? Your reflection in the mirror is identical to you, but it is also the opposite of you! It’s kind of like how your right hand and left hand are also identical, but opposites of one another. Like your hands, molecules in organic chemistry can also exist in a ‘left-’ and ‘right-handed’ form. In chemistry, we call this idea chirality.
Many researchers at Vanderbilt spend a lot of time thinking about this concept because it is important when we design medicines. Our bodies are made of chiral proteins which can be specialized to only interact with either a left- or right-handed version of a molecule. You’ve probably come across chiral molecules before and didn’t even know it! Limonene is a small molecule that comes from oranges and lemons. It gives both of these fruits their signature scent, but the right-handed version smells like oranges and the left-handed version smells like lemons. How can our noses tell them apart? It’s because the proteins in our noses are also chiral! It’s similar to how a left-handed baseball glove will only fit on your left hand.