Heuristic Model On The Origin Of The Homochirality Of Life Heuristic Model On The Origin Of The Homochirality Of life

Life demonstrates remarkable homochirality of its major building blocks: nucleic acids, amino acids, sugars, and phospholipids. We propose a mechanism that places the root of life homochirality in the formation of phospholipid bilayer vesicles (liposomes).

These liposomes are formed at the water-air interface from Langmuir layers and contain ribose, presumably delivered to Early Earth by carbonaceous meteorites. Although the extraterrestrial ribose was initially racemic, life is homochiral, based on D-ribose and its derivatives.

The phospholipid membrane high permeability to D-ribose, combined with the ribose interaction with the bilayer charged phosphate groups, leads to ribose phosphorylation, forming D-ribose-5-phosphate. Once inside, the D-ribose-5-phosphate molecules cannot cross the membrane. The catalytic action of Fe (3+ions) greatly enhances the phosphorylation rate.

Overall, this process is enantioselective, substantially favoring the buildup of D-ribose over L-ribose. Through liposome fusion, fission, and self-replication, this eventually leads to the Darwinian evolution of these structures and to the conversion of D-ribose-5-phosphate into complex functional molecules, such as ribozymes and RNA, and eventually into DNA, all of which inherit D-ribose chirality.

Vladimir Subbotin, Gennady Fiksel

Comments: 13 pages
Subjects: Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)
Cite as: arXiv:2512.11136 [q-bio.PE] (or arXiv:2512.11136v2 [q-bio.PE] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.11136
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Submission history
From: Vladimir Subbotin
[v1] Thu, 11 Dec 2025 21:56:48 UTC (448 KB)
[v2] Mon, 29 Dec 2025 17:32:20 UTC (837 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11136

Astrobiology,