Untersuchungen zum Ursprung der Homochiralität am Beispiel der Aminosäuren

The question of the origin of homochirality, life's strange habit of using only one out of two possible enantiomers in many of its molecular building blocks, is closely related to the question of the origin of life itself. In this cumulative thesis composed of five research papers and a book-chapter, photochemical concepts for introducing a chiral bias in amino acids are discussed. The results of two different sets of experiments with circularly polarized VUV radiation, namely asymmetric photosynthesis and asymmetric photolysis, are given. Furthermore evidence for the presence of several diamino acids, a class of substances relevant for the evolution of a possible early form of genetic material called PNA, in meteorites is presented and calculations of their chiroptical properties are presented and discussed.