Introduction

This chapter describes the background and purpose of this monograph. First of all, the significance of chiral hierarchy is emphasized in biological organisms. These characteristic properties raise one unexplored question: the effects of chirality inversion on biological activities. As an example, why do some bioactive peptide oligomers contain a d-amino acid residue even violating the rule of homo-chirality? How is the conformation of a peptide chain influenced by the d/l conversion of a single residue and what is the consequence on functions? Presently no efficient spectroscopic method seems to be available to tackle the problem. This monograph is intended to show the utility of multi-dimensional vibrational circular dichroism (MultiD-VCD) on these issues.