Sharif Digital Repository

Many have claimed that quantum mechanics is playing a non-trivial, i.e. further from merely governing atomic and molecular realm, in living. If so, clearly quantum mechanics should have played a key role in the origin of life especially in the transition from chemical evolution to biological (Darwinian) evolution. Long before quantum aspects of living systems came to focus, It was known that all the amino acids are right handed and all the sugars are left handed in living systems. Bio-molecules having the same sense of chirality, i.e. optical activity, are called biohomochirality. Detailed studies on the structure and functioning of biomolecules buttressed the idea that the selection of... 

The origin of life is one of the fundamental problems of the science, which is not yet answered appositely. The building blocks of life’s molecules, including nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and proteins, are composed of carbohydrates and amino acids. At the chemical level, these building blocks have definite chirality. This phenomenon is known as biological homochirality. Due to the fact that this phenomenon has taken place in the early stages of life, it is believed that the life’s origin is to a great extent connected to the origin of biological homochirality. Like every other system, at the microscopic level, life’s molecules are composed of atoms which are governed by the lows of quantum... 

In this study the concept of the origin of life, as an important question, is investigated and reviewed.Then the possibility of the beginning of life from an extraterrestrial origin is studied via spectroscopy methods to analyze the role of the cosmic waves.Moreover, by considering the similarity between the chirality of the essential amino acids and extraterrestrial amino acids, found in meteors the various methods for studying the structure of molecules, as well as the possibility of the transfer of the central elements of life from space to the earth are reviewed in details.Finally, we suggest how chirality might be emerged due to the interaction of the molecule with the environment,...