D-Alanine s Analogous to D-Valine or L-Valine That is a Question.doc

D- Alanine is Analogous to D- Valine or L- Valine: That is a Question Wei Min, Wen-Qing Wang and Zhe-Ming Wang (College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China) Li-Ying Wang, Lei Chen and Feng Deng (Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, P.O. Box 71010, China) Abstract The contribution of PVED in phase transition process of D-/L- alanine and valine crystals was confirmed by solid state 1H CRAMPS NMR experiments. It was found that the proton nucleus behaviors of D-alanine are similar to that of L-valine crystal instead of D-valine in this specific phase transition. The X-ray diffraction study indicates that the energy of L-alanine contributed by electroweak force is lower than D-alanine in the crystal situation, but it would be difficult to judge which eantiomer of valine is more stable because of its two kinds of conformations. These facts suggest that the sign of PVED values in alanine and valine crystal systems may be opposite, which also questions the earlier calculations on amino acids that all the naturally occurring L-form is stablized by electroweak force. Keywords: D- and L-alanine and valine, origin of homochirality, phase transition, parity-violating energy difference, 1H CRAMPS NMR spectra 1. Introduction While the phenomenology of parity-violating (P-odd) effects in atoms has been observed more than a decade ago,[1] interest in parity-violating weak neutral current (WNC) at the molecular level have focused on the calculation[2-6] and experimental search for parity-violating energy difference (PVED) between enantiomers of a chiral molecule, and a link between the asymmetry of biochemisty and the homochiral scenario under terrestrial and extraterrestrial conditions has been intensively searched for.[7-11] In 1998, a novel theoretical discovery,[2] reconfirmed by independent computation