HYDROCHIRAL · Molecular Control and Characterization of Chiral Hydrogen-bond Networks

Chirality and water both play key roles in various aspects of biological functions and disentangling water’s role in chiral recognition in biological processes is paramount to ultimately understanding the origins of homochirality. HydroChiral proposes to do this by developing ground-breaking instrumentation that uses broadband molecular rotational spectroscopy combined with supersonic expansions, buffer gas cell technology, and novel chiral capabilities to explore pressings topics at the forefront of water research and chirality such as the generation and characterization of chiral water, the generation of larger water clusters to examine the first solvation shell, and absolute configuration determination for analytical applications. This technique will differentiate between enantiomers, diasteriomers, and conformers within complex gas mixtures while enabling the study, at an unprecedented accuracy, of the chiral water structures that form in the solvation of biomolecules and unravel the active role of water in most biological processes. The project will demonstrate the use of chiral techniques that have been developed for rotational spectroscopy on molecular clusters for the first time, and it will use enantiomer-selective population transfer techniques to tilt the racemic nature of chiral water clusters and create enantiomerically enriched water. The proposed research encompasses my three fields of expertise to perform cutting-edge research in water cluster science, chirality and solvation using the advantageous features of rotational spectroscopy. The outcomes of HydroChiral will open new horizons for not only fundamental research in physical chemistry and molecular physics but also in applied fields ranging from analytical chemistry to asymmetric synthesis in pharmaceutical applications such as drug discovery, where absolute configuration determination is crucial.