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Amino-acid enantiomeric excesses (ee's) have been detected in different types of carbonaceous chondrites, all in favor of the L enantiomer. In this article, we discuss possible deterministic causes to the presence of these amino-acid ee's in meteorites and evaluate in particular enantioselective photolysis by circularly polarized light (CPL). The electronic circular dichroism spectra of a set of amino- and hydroxy-acids, all detected in chondritic matter but some with ee's and others without ee's, were calculated and compared. The spectra were calculated for the most stable conformation(s) of the considered molecules using quantum mechanical methods (density functional theory). Our results suggest that CPL photolysis in the gas phase was perhaps not at the origin of the presence of ee's in meteorites and that the search for another, but still unknown, deterministic cause must be seriously undertaken., (Copyright © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

In this article we focus on the interaction between a chiral molecule and a single achiral molecule or an ensemble of achiral molecules. The desymmetrization of the achiral molecules resulting from this interaction is described as "chiralization." By analogy with electric polarization, we factorize chiralization into three factors, i.e., orientation, atomic, and electronic terms. Chiralization depends on the dipolar polarizability of the chiralized molecule but also on polarizabilities of higher order. The experimental part of this work is devoted to the electronic chiralization of a xenon atom and its observation by (129)Xe NMR spectroscopy. Copyright 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.