What are left-oriented molecules?
The Art of Maintaining a Healthy Life
Dr. Oscar Vargas-Machuca E., MD
We are going to consider the basic idea that is the basis for the biological action of the compounds Alen and Eveliza, which are important discoveries for medical science. The use of these substances optimizes the cells function and that translates to better health and better life expectancies. The investigation comes from one of the characteristics that our body possesses: only molecular compounds such as amino acids that are in a polarized plane facing left (chirality) are recognized by our enzymes and those that are right-oriented are not and are of no use to our metabolism. This knowledge about asymmetric molecules started in France during the middle of the 19th century when the French chemist Jean Baptiste Biot discovered that quartz crystals had the ability to divert light into a polarized plane. He considered these types of substances to be “optimally active”. Moreover, Biot also verified that solutions made up of these crystals, of the organic type, among them being sugar and tartaric acid, are the compounds derived from living beings. These organic compounds had a surprising nature because they did not present a reticulum, which he considered to be the basis to explain such a strange phenomena. This made him wonder if the deflection had its origin in the structure of the molecules themselves, but in that time the methods to verify such a theory did not exist.
However, one young chemist, a friend of Biot, by the name of Luis Pasteur was given the task of finding an explanation for such a strange phenomenon. Pasteur knew that tartaric acid came from grapes and other fruits, and when subjected to experimentation, it didn’t turn the plane of polarization. For this he called it “racemic”. This was a curious situation and the question left no hope. How could two equal substances behave with the light in such a strange manner? Using that, Pasteur suspected that there should have been two classes of crystals that form tartaric acid, and they were! He immediately made use of a microscope, separated the crystals using tweezers, placing one crystal in one orientation and another in the opposite. Once that small task was complete he could now make two different solutions and observe them in the polarity meter. Just like that he discovered that one solution deflected the polarization plane to the left and the other to the right. It is easy to comprehend the emotion of the research in those moments and his words were, “I have just completed a great discovery…..I am so happy that I am trembling up and down and I am incapable of looking into the polarity meter once more”. Pasteur’s discovery demonstrated Biot’s assumption about asymmetry of certain organic compounds. Pasteur considered, with intense comptemplation, the discovery he just completed and the implications it represented. He came to a point where he surmised that organic substances that are used by living beings are optically active, not like the inanimate molecules of the world which were always inactive.
Pasteur had the plain conviction of thinking that living beings are the only ones capable of producing asymmetric molecules and because of this it constituted a unique heritage amongst living beings.
In the year 1860 other scientists such as the French man Joseph Achille Le Bel and the young Dutch man Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff proposed that the carbon atom was shaped in the form of a tetrahedron, and that, the combinations with other atoms in the extremes of the valences they formed some chemical links with other four atoms in each of the vertices of the tetrahedron. But if they were placed in at least two equal sides of the four, the structure would be asymmetric and not able to be superimposed in the mirror.
The theory of spatial disposition has been of enormous importance to biochemistry and today we know that organic molecules possess a structure with basic symmetry that they call “chirality”, a term created by Lord Kelvin.
Pasteur had the idea that symmetry of those two organic compounds was the key to explain the secret of life: “Life, as much as it manifests itself to us,” he wrote, “is a function of the symmetry of the Universe and the consequence of this….I could imagine that all living species are primordially, in their structure and external forms, functions of cosmic symmetry.”
In general, living beings and us in particular, have a certain symmetry whose “magic” is an imprinted seal of cellular chemistry. A world, in which complex transformations, with opposing thermochemical gradients take place creating infinite possibilities of isolated chemical combinations, carried on different metabolic pathways. This constitutes the basic balance between construction and destruction of the various chemical compounds that give rise to the “miracle of life.”
Why do the different atomic combinations exist, is it necessary that the enzymatic molecules recognize with absolute precision the spatial structure of each biochemical compound and chirality is of high value for this assignment? On the contrary, the chemistry of life would be a disaster if so and this would not be able to exist. Here we have a problem of transcendental importance for our life and health: We need intimate contact with nature in order to live because nature holds the prime materials we need to reconstruct our tissues and organs as well as energy to put the biochemical “machinery” of a living being into motion. But this presents a great question, “What molecules do we need to ingest?”
I am sure that no one, not even a single person since the dawn of humanity has had to ask such a simple absurdity; to eat is to EAT, nothing more. But this rational idea is far from the truth since, in order for our body to function; we need proteins that possess a left-oriented chirality and carbohydrates with a right-oriented chirality. If it were the reverse the usefulness of nutrients we ingested would be null and we would die of hunger.
When we are in a restaurant and we ask for filet mignon or a steak we never would ask the waiter what proportion of left-oriented molecules are in the meat, probably because he wouldn’t know how to respond. However the topic is of life and death it is of such importance in view that it pertains to our intake of food and nutrients.
I think that the deterioration of health that we see in people, especially in countries of the first world, is owed to the use of technology in the preparation of foods, making them more flavorful and attractive but less nutritious.
I formulated this question 45 years ago and the give and take of such an idea went into the possible formation of a food compound whose protein molecules were deflected to the left polarized plane. This gave rise to Alen and Eveliza.