The Mystery of Mirror Chaos: How Life Originated and How Nobel Discoveries Work in Kharkiv

Life | 07 October, 2026 at 19:12 | 186 | Author: Olena Zelenina

Portraits by Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize. Collage by Olena Zelenina.

Look at your palms. Your left and right hands are mirror images of each other: no matter how you rotate them, placing one on top of the other so that they completely coincide is impossible. In chemistry, this phenomenon is called chirality (from the Greek kheir — "hand").

The molecules of many substances also have their "left" and "right" mirror twins (enantiomers). Ordinary chemical reactions create an equal mixture (50 to 50) of both mirror forms. In 2026, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to French-Israeli scientist Henri B. Kagan and Japanese researcher Kenso Soai "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."

Ukrainian and Kharkiv Pragmatic Context: From Fundamental Chemistry to the Pharmaceutical Industry

Although the Nobel research itself was conducted in the laboratories of France and Japan, the concepts of asymmetric catalysis and stereoselectivity serve as a fundamental working tool for Ukrainian chemical science and the high-tech sector:

In the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Faculty of Chemistry) and the Kharkiv STC "Institute for Single Crystals" of the NAS of Ukraine, the principles of creating optically pure compounds are used to develop new biologically active substances, fluorescent labels for medical diagnostics, and fine organic synthesis.

Ukraine is one of the key global suppliers of chiral "building blocks" for global pharmaceuticals. In particular, the Kyiv-based company Enamine, in close cooperation with scientists, synthesizes and exports millions of unique optically pure molecular fragments. Based on these blocks, leading global pharmaceutical companies, applying Nobel methods of asymmetric synthesis, design new safe medicines for oncological, viral, and cardiovascular diseases.

Thanks to the fundamental discoveries of Kagan and Soai, Ukrainian chemists and pharmaceutical developers create highly effective drugs and materials, bypassing the extremely complex and expensive stages of purification from "mirror twins." The fundamental mystery of the origin of life has turned in Ukraine into a pragmatic tool of modern highly efficient organic synthesis.