4 ms·

This was news to me and pretty striking: > The concept of orientability has important implications. Take enantiomers. These chemical compounds have the same ch

This was news to me and pretty striking: > The concept of orientability has important implications. Take enantiomers. These chemical compounds have the same chemical structures except for one key difference: they are mirror images of one another. For example, the chemical L-methamphetamine is an ingredient in Vicks inhalers. Its mirror image, D-methamphetamine, is a Class A illegal drug. If we lived in a nonorientable world, these chemicals would be indistinguishable.

tome 8y ago
> If we lived in a nonorientable world, these chemicals would be indistinguishable. True, but you might have to move such a molecule arbitrarily far ("all the way around the Mobius strip") in order to change it from one enantiomer to ther other.
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quickthrower2 8y ago
Millions of Breaking Bad fans already know this right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnmWTruibMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnmWTruibMY :-)
avip 8y ago
In a non-orientable world, we would not have lived to enjoy the confusion between medicine and illegal drugs - we would die from our inability to consume L-sugars thanks to our entire glycolysis cycle being 100% D-oriented.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  It's a bit anthropic but if humans had evolved on a non orientable universe that wouldn't be a problem.
aidenn0 8y ago
I had too look up "Class A" apparently the UK has a separate classification system for legal and illegal possession of drugs. The US has no such separate formal system for illegal possession of prescription drugs, but rather a patchwork set of laws, while having 5 "schedules" for availability of prescription drugs. D-methamphetamine, for example is Schedule-II which means you can get a prescription for it, but there are several controls.
morley 8y ago
A particularly infamous example of this is Thalidomide, a drug for pregnant women whose mirror can cause birth defects. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/t/thalidomide.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/arch...
- tome 8y ago
  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Pharmacology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Pharmacology
burfog 8y ago
Didn't somebody make a fully synthetic bacterium? Flipping that around, making a sort of enantiomer bacterium, would be fascinating. Someday we could make a whole little toy ecosystem of mirror image organisms. Give it a century, and maybe we could do people.

tome 8y ago

> If we lived in a nonorientable world, these chemicals would be indistinguishable. True, but you might have to move such a molecule arbitrarily far ("all the way around the Mobius strip") in order to change it from one enantiomer to ther other.

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quickthrower2 8y ago

Millions of Breaking Bad fans already know this right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnmWTruibMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnmWTruibMY :-)

avip 8y ago

In a non-orientable world, we would not have lived to enjoy the confusion between medicine and illegal drugs - we would die from our inability to consume L-sugars thanks to our entire glycolysis cycle being 100% D-oriented.

rtkwe 8y ago
It's a bit anthropic but if humans had evolved on a non orientable universe that wouldn't be a problem.

aidenn0 8y ago

I had too look up "Class A" apparently the UK has a separate classification system for legal and illegal possession of drugs. The US has no such separate formal system for illegal possession of prescription drugs, but rather a patchwork set of laws, while having 5 "schedules" for availability of prescription drugs. D-methamphetamine, for example is Schedule-II which means you can get a prescription for it, but there are several controls.

morley 8y ago

A particularly infamous example of this is Thalidomide, a drug for pregnant women whose mirror can cause birth defects. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/t/thalidomide.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/arch...

tome 8y ago
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Pharmacology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Pharmacology

burfog 8y ago

Didn't somebody make a fully synthetic bacterium? Flipping that around, making a sort of enantiomer bacterium, would be fascinating. Someday we could make a whole little toy ecosystem of mirror image organisms. Give it a century, and maybe we could do people.