Hi I'm a chemist, my current work is with PFAS compounds, often known as forever chemicals. Please ask me about those, or anything else you are curious about related to chemistry. I will try to give you a solid response.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I was told in school that L enantiomers (I was taught to call them sinistral) are more stable than D-configuration because of less eclipsing of atoms with lone pairs. I don't remember why that would make it more stable though. That might have just been a specific compound. I slept a lot in class, sorry.

      • ZoomeristLeninist [comrade/them, she/her]M
        ·
        2 years ago

        S/R is typically used for chiral centers while L/D are used to describe whole molecules. so IUPAC names for large molecules with lots of chiral centers have a mess of R's and S's but can be simplified with a common name with an L or D. for example the IUPAC name for the biologically active glucose is (2R,3S,4R,5R)-2,3,4,5,6-Pentahydroxyhexanal, but it can be simplified to the common name D-glucose

      • StolenStalin [comrade/them,they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        R are more common because enzymes and protein folding are stereospecific. And they evolved along with us, the original microbes that won out just happened to make R instead of S in most places.