How to Use chiral in a Sentence
chiral
adjective-
The amino acids and sugars that make up our bodies are chiral.
—Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 14 Dec. 2016
-
Scientists now have an enzyme that doesn’t need a chiral world.
—Quanta Magazine, 26 Nov. 2014
-
But the cross-chiral ribozyme binds based on the molecule’s shape rather than its sequence.
—Quanta Magazine, 25 Aug. 2016
-
Two of the chiral molecules would bond to the metal ion to form the catalyst.
—Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 Oct. 2026
-
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are chiral molecules.
—Sajish Mathew, The Conversation, 7 Oct. 2026
-
When electrons pass through chiral molecules, one type of spin can get through more easily than others.
—Mallory Green, The Conversation, 8 Oct. 2026
-
Sam will have to infiltrate a weapons factory or hunt massive chiral creatures.
—Gieson Cacho, Mercury News, 15 July 2025
-
Amino acids come in two mirror-image configurations, just like our left and right hands, called chiral forms.
—Amirali Aghazadeh, The Conversation, 12 Dec. 2025
-
That occurs because the shape is chiral and cannot be transformed into its perfect mirror image.
—Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics, 30 Sep. 2019
-
The newest addition to the list is a chiral bose-liquid state, which scientists just observed for the first time.
—Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 14 July 2023
-
Typically, these are very small twisted metal wires that are also chiral.
—Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics, 30 Sep. 2019
-
Such chiral holograms could be used to defeat counterfeiters.
—IEEE Spectrum, 13 May 2016
-
Scissors are chiral tools designed to interact with the human hand, which is also chiral.
—Mallory Green, The Conversation, 8 Oct. 2026
-
The corresponding non-chiral electrodes did not show the same behavior.
—Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 10 Aug. 2026
-
Amino acids are among chiral molecules, and a living organism can only contain one of the versions.
—Theresa Gaffney, STAT, 7 Oct. 2026
-
When electrons move through a chiral structure, the structure can favor one direction of electron spin over the other.
—Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 10 Aug. 2026
-
In the new study, the researchers coupled chiral liquid crystals with fluorescent dyes that emitted red, green, or blue light.
—IEEE Spectrum, 16 Nov. 2023
-
The drug also contained a chiral molecule that caused disastrous side effects in many babies.
—Joanna Klein, New York Times, 14 June 2017
-
But instead of evaluating a chemical, the researchers plan to roast the microbes with beams of chiral electrons or muons.
—Quanta Magazine, 29 June 2020
-
Molecules that are chiral are those whose mirror images cannot be superimposed on one another.
—Adam Kovac, Scientific American, 7 Oct. 2026
-
When objects appear different in the mirror, scientists call them chiral.
—Zack Savitsky, Wired News, 22 June 2025
-
The other route is the chiral vortical symmetry, which requires that the plasma be rotating.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 2 Aug. 2017
-
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are among chiral molecules, and a living organism can only contain one of the versions.
—Annalisa Merelli, STAT, 7 Oct. 2026
-
Or did chemical and physical forces conspire to create chiral molecules before life arose?
—Quanta Magazine, 20 June 2016
-
Kagan’s and Soai’s work showed how a faint asymmetry between two chiral forms can grow into a decisive preference.
—Mallory Green, The Conversation, 8 Oct. 2026
-
Many pharmaceutical compounds are enantiomers (which is the word for mutually chiral pairs).
—Rebecca Coffey, Forbes, 9 Dec. 2021
-
Electrons with one spin orientation will move more efficiently across a chiral molecule in one direction than the other.
—Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 6 Sep. 2023
-
Many molecules important to biology and medicine are chiral, including amino acids and some drug molecules.
—Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 3 Oct. 2026
-
Three-dimensional light fields could provide a new way to probe these subtle differences because the fields themselves can have chiral, or handed, properties.
—Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 3 Oct. 2026
-
Not everyone counts these different chiral and polarization states as distinct particle types.
—Quanta Magazine, 15 June 2026
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'chiral.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Last Updated:
