Prof. Agnieszka Kiliszek, Dr. Leszek Błaszczyk, Dr. Magdalena Bejger and prof. Wojciech Rypniewski (all from the Department of Structure and Function of Biomolecules of IBCH PAS) are the authors of the article “Broken symmetry between RNA enantiomers in a crystal lattice” “(Nucleic Acids Research, 49, 12535–12539, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkab480).

All life is made of amino acids (protein components) with the L configuration and sugars (including D-ribose and D-deoxyribose residues in nucleotides and nucleic acids) with the D configuration. Symmetrical, mirror versions of these molecules are chemically equivalent, but in in biology are very rare, and when present, they usually have completely different functions than their standard counterparts. The article is an attempt to answer the question of how symmetry could be broken at a very early stage of the formation of life on Earth, which led to the domination of all known biological systems by L-amino acids and D-sugars. The paper from the Department of Structure and Function of Biomolecules was distinguished by the editors of the journal by placing an illustration that is its announcement on the front cover.