Question

A chemist looking to enhance parenteral nutrition attempts to create amino acids and sugars in the lab that are produced naturally in the body. he finds that his workups consistently produce racemic mixtures of the amino acids that the body normally synthesizes and uses in only a single enantiomeric form. the most likely reason for this distinction is that:

Answer 1

Enantiomer

Explanation:

The most likely reason for the given type of distinction is that the enzymes the body uses are typically stereospecific and only produce one enantiomer

Many of the enzymes used in the body are stereospecific - they will only react with one particular stereoisomer form of a molecule and will only catalyze a reaction that produces a particular isomer of the product

Often drugs are administered as a racemic mixture because work in the lab produces such a mixture even though only one of the isomers has any biological effect