Over the past two days, I attended the UK-Japan Chirality Conference at the University of Glasgow. The event brought together researchers working across chemistry, physics, materials science and biology, with talks covering different aspects of chirality and its applications.
One talk I found particularly fascinating was given by Dr Lewis E. MacKenzie on homochirality and the concept of “mirror life”.
Life on Earth is homochiral, meaning that many of the molecules used by living systems occur predominantly in one handed form. Mirror life refers to hypothetical biological systems built using molecular components with the opposite handedness to those found in natural organisms.
What made the discussion especially interesting was the connection between this fundamental scientific question and much wider concerns. If mirror organisms were ever created, existing biological recognition and surveillance systems might not respond to them in the same way they respond to natural life.
This creates questions not only for biology and chemistry, but also for biosurveillance, biosecurity and the development of technologies capable of detecting molecular chirality.
The talk also highlighted the growing importance of chirality-sensitive optical methods, including circularly polarised luminescence and enantioselective imaging. These topics connected closely with my own research involving chiral nanostructures, optical characterisation and polarisation-dependent emission.
Beyond the talks, the conference was also a chance to meet researchers from different backgrounds and hear how chirality is being studied from several scientific perspectives. On the second day, some of us continued the conversations over lunch, with plenty of jokes and lighter moments alongside the science.
It was a fascinating two days filled with new ideas, different perspectives and good company.
