The hosts walk through the Nobel committee's popular-science diagram of the Soai reaction and argue it contains a stereochemistry error. In the colored illustration, one catalyst structure appears simply rotated into its mirror image rather than drawn as a true enantiomer, so the dashed and solid wedge bonds (indicating a zinc group pointing away versus toward the viewer) don't correctly swap as they should for a genuine left/right mirror pair. They contrast this with the paper's own scientific-background figure, which they say gets the wedges right, and conclude the simplified public version likely introduced the mistake.
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The hosts note that if the molecule were completely flat, the left and right versions wouldn't be true enantiomers at all, since chirality here depends on the 3D wedge bonds.
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They explain the standard chemistry convention that a dotted wedge means a bond pointing away from the viewer and a solid wedge means pointing toward the viewer, and that flipping a molecule should reverse this.
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They speculate the error happened because graphic artists redrew the image for the popular-science version rather than reusing the original paper's figure used in the scientific background.
571 words · auto-generated from the episode video
1:10:37Before we end, I wanna mention that I'm pretty sure I caught a mistake by the Nobel Committee's press material. Okay, so on the left-hand side is the popular science background. That's an image of the Soai chemical reaction. The intermediary is the left and right versions of the catalyst that then auto-catalyzed themselves and create the runaway reaction. And if you notice on the left-hand side, the colored versions, this is the popular science, so they got some graphic artists to make this version. They're showing the left version of it and then the right version of it, it's flipped.
1:11:18Yes. Right? Okay, but let's look at the, let's look at the molecule in a little bit greater detail. If this molecule was completely flat, then all I'd have to do is just flip the left into the right and then I would, those two are not enantiomers if they're completely flat. The fact that they're not flat comes from the fact that on the left, there's a dotted line that's attaching the zinc group to the organic molecule and on the right-hand side, there's a solid line that is attaching the zinc to the solid molecule. Now in chemistry, the convention is dotted line means it's moving away and solid line means it's
1:11:59moving towards. But if you're flipping it, then the zinc that's away on the left-hand side, as I turn it and flip it, the zinc is going to come towards me on the right-hand side. Those two are the same molecule, right? In the scientific background, they were a bit more careful because I think they just copy and pasted the image from the paper itself. And there it's showing the left and the right versions of that molecule. It's not flipped. Right. And one of them is dotted going away. One of them is solid going towards.
1:12:40Uh-oh. Right? I see it. Yeah, so on the left-hand side, what would have been correct is both of them are either dotted or you don't flip and one of them is dotted, one of them is solid. Yep yep. You see what I'm saying? I see exactly what you're saying because by having it flipped in this orientation, you're actually changing the in and outness of the zinc group. The zinc is going away from me on the left, but if I flip it to the right, it would be coming towards me. It's the same molecule. On the other hand, if it's the opposite version, then as I flip it, it would be a dotted line on the right as well. Or a waiting comment. Right, so if there's any chemists out there that have some justification for this, let me know,
1:13:21but I'm pretty sure the Nobel committee made a mistake here. The Nobel committee has been very quiet since this tweet. But given what we've gone through, it makes total sense. Why these are representing different things. Yeah yeah. On the right-hand side, we're seeing true chirality. We're seeing the enantiomers that are left-handed and right-handed. On the left-hand side, we're actually seeing the same molecule because all you're doing is rotating it. That's a good one. In case people didn't think we did our homework, this is proof positive that we spend the time. So in the comments, FFP pod greater than Nobel committee.
1:14:03Let's go. Or I'm wrong and let me know.
Nobel PrizeChemistryBiochemistryChemical origin of lifeSynthetic Biology