Racemates and Robots

Some quick points:

• Stereochemistry is about pairs of molecules that are almost identical, but the molecules cannot be interposed on each other and the mirror image of one is identical to the other. This is essentially analogous to one's left and right hands. Stereochemistry is immensely important in biological systems, see: Thalidomide debacle.
  

• 1849 Louis Pasteur painstakingly isolated a racemic mixture using a tweezers

Recent work done by a Dutch crystallization group discovered something rather shocking. If a crystal racemic mixture was left in a liquid with glass beads to mix for long enough [days to weeks] only one form of the molecule would be left as a crystal, i.e. the left handed ones were converted to the right handed ones or vice-versa (Noorduin, Crystal Growth & Design 2008, Vol 8, No 5, pp 1675).
It may sound like I have stolen a moment of your life telling you this stuff but it is significant: Firstly our man Pastuer needn't have picked out crystals by hand he could have left it alone and it would have sorted itself out.
Secondly in nature almost only one enantiomer of many naturally produced molecules exist. Using normal synthesis chemistry both enantiomers form. Since all it takes is time for a mixture to become enantiopure, it takes time. So start off at year dot with a primordial soup. [Times passes]. We get a enantiopure set of molecules, ripe for life... At least that is where the idea goes.

Another thing I saw at the conference was a paper on the process control of a crystallization using a neural network. When I heard this I immediately thought this. But of course, Skynet it isn't...