Researchers report successful synthesis of specific chiral molecules using rearrangements of simple hydrocarbons

In nature, organic molecules are either left- or right-handed, but synthesizing molecules with a specific "handedness" in a lab is hard to do. Make a drug or enzyme with the wrong "handedness," and it just won't work. Now chemists at the University of California, Davis, are getting closer to mimicking nature's chemical efficiency through computational modeling and physical experimentation.