The handedness of life – with Jack Szostak

Many molecules are chiral, which means they have two possible forms that are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, just like your left and right hand. But in the amino acids and sugars that make up living things, we find only one of these forms — and young chemist Abigail Hubbard wants to know why. She’s keen to pick Jack Szostak’s brain on the source of this ‘homochirality’, a subject close to Jack’s own research into the origin of life on earth.