I know that the drug Thalidomide is a chiral compound with one chiral center, therefore it has 2 enantiomers. I also know that one enantiomer is harmless, but the other is very harmful and causes birth defects. How exactly does this happen? Does it have something to do with the rotation of the molecule? Does it have something to do with how steric the compound becomes in its mirror image? I never fully understood this topic, and I can never seem to understand why a mirrored image of essentially the same compound has different properties.
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Imagine that thalidomide is your left hand, and whatever it interacts with is a left glove that does something (I dunno, warms up) when a left hand is inserted. Your right hand is a mirror image of your left hand, but won’t fit right into a left glove, and therefore won’t activate it.
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