Kinetic Aspects of Soai´s Asymmetric Autocatalysis

Abstract. Recent kinetic studies are discussed that shed light on the reaction mechanism of the autocatalytic addition of diisopropylzinc to pyrimidine carbaldehydes (Soai reaction). Soai’s reaction stands for the exclusive example of chirally autocatalytic reaction system in organic chemistry and has attracted close attention from several view-points: as possible account for the origin of biomolecular homochiral-ity, as potential innovation in enantioselective synthesis or as a fur-ther remarkable manifestation of nonlinear dynamics in chemical sys-tems. It is indicated that the reaction is driven by enantioselective autocatalysis and mutual inhibition as the essential components. A numerical approach reveals that experimentally observed chiral amplification and mirror-symmetry breaking can be readily repro-duced by a comparatively simple kinetic model that considers monomers as the catalytic species