Chemical Mechanisms and Biological Effects of Chiral Nanomaterials

ConspectusChirality exerts significant roles in biological systems and physiological processes; amino acids, sugars, peptides with multilevel structures, macromolecular proteins, and nucleic acids are all known to exhibit a single chiral structure. The characteristics of intrinsic chirality in a biological system determine the specificity of interactions between biomolecules and also influence a series of key processes in biological systems. Consequently, investigating chirality and the biogenesis of life is critical if we are to understand how the human body works. Although the influential role of chiral materials on biological processes has been investigated for several decades, the specific relationships between chirality and biological functionality have yet to be determined. In order to elucidate the specific role played by chirality in living processes, researchers have tended to focus on three essential aspects: (1) the origin of chirality and breaking the symmetry of life; (2) the amplification of chirality and the realization of high levels of homogeneous chirality in living systems, and (3) chirality transfer mechanisms in vivo.Herein, we provide a detailed review of chiral materials from different dimensions (one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional) and their relative biological effects. We summarize the mechanism of formation, chiral nanostructures, and their effects in biological systems and introduce the current research status and clinical applications of chiral nanomaterials in biological systems. With regard to designing late-model chiral materials, we focus on the design principles of new models, summarize our efforts in this area, and summarize relevant findings. We also describe the use of circularly polarized light (CPL), electromagnetic fields, and chiral ligands to explore their effects on the formation of chiral configurations. In particular, we focus on the basic synthesis of chiral metals, metal oxides and noble metals, semiconductor nanostructures, optical frequency circular dichroism (CD) effects, and the mechanisms that induce photochirality. The biological function of specific chiral materials had been depicted, with specific focused on stereospecific biological interactions, including enantioselective reactions in biomarker sensing, gene editing, and biological imaging applications that may lead to the controllable manipulation of chiral cell behavior. Next, we provide an analysis of chiral specific cleavage and the differentiation of neural stem cells and how this technology might improve the treatment of neurodegenerative disease. In addition, we review the advantages and feasibility of chiral nanomaterials as immune adjuvants for the prevention and treatment of cancer and analyze how chiral properties might reshape the gut microbiota and improve tryptophan metabolism, effectively leading to the improvement of neuroinflammation in the brain, reversing Alzheimer's disease (AD), and significantly improving cognitive abilities. Finally, we also discuss the challenges that face the potential use of chiral nanotechnology in biomedicine and biological engineering, discuss the strategies that have been proposed to surmount these problems, and discuss the future perspectives of this technology.