Is God Left-Handed?

I am sure most of you have seen Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" Fresco in the Sistine Chapel where God reaches out with His right hand to touch the finger of Adam. Well I have it on good authority that God is ambidextrous if not left-handed. Did you know that all of the proteins in your body are made from only left-handed amino acid isomers?

In chemistry, certain molecules with the same chemical formula can be formed in two or more configurations or isomers. In my last blog, I mentioned the "cis-" and "trans-" isomers of fatty acids. These are "Diastereomers", isomers that are not mirror images of each other. Enantiomers, sometimes called Optical Isomers, are mirror image isomers and cannot be superimposed on one another, much like your right and left hands. Your hands are the same but opposite much like the two optical isomers of an amino acid. This property of "handedness" is called Chirality.

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Did you know that all of the proteins in your body are made from only left-handed amino acids?

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Now in laboratory chemical reactions, the formation of a molecule that is chiral will result in a 50/50 mixture of the two isomers. But in the body, only one form, the L-amino acid is synthesized or used. This is because the function of a protein is determined by its shape and its shape is determined by the amino acid isomers in its sequence. If the protein consisted of mixed L- and D- amino acids, the protein could not fold properly and would not function as intended in our systems.

Now before you go and say that God is left-handed, lets look at the other major structures in our system, DNA and RNA. Proteins are derived from these two nucleic acids and the nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA are right-handed! Not only that but the DNA double helix spiral is also right-handed and the secondary structure of proteins is a right-handed coil called an alpha helix. So in the body, all of the amino acids are "left-handed' or L-amino acids and all of the nucleotides are "right-handed" D-nucleotides. God is indeed ambidextrous!

Mark 16:19 - "After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was taken up into heaven and He sat at the right hand of God. (NIV)"