The October 7 chemistry Nobel recognition of Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai makes an older mechanistic result newly worth examining. Illinois's October 8 institutional response points to Scott Denmark and collaborators' 2020 analysis of the Soai reaction.
Their distinction is structural: the homochiral tetramer's zinc sites permit the substrate arrangement that supports autocatalysis, whereas an energetically favoured racemic tetramer lacks the relevant catalytic geometry. Thermodynamic population and catalytic contribution can pull in different directions. That is more specific than simply saying an initial imbalance is amplified. The research explains an important reaction; it does not settle how biological homochirality began.