A team of chemists at the University of Cambridge has developed a metal-free way to convert symmetrical diols selectively into one of two mirror-image isomers. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group took advantage of the ability of chiral versions of quinuclidine—which were derived from Cinchona alkaloids—to catalyze the dememorization of meso-diols under a blue light in conjunction with a photocatalyst and extract hydrogen atoms from symmetrical molecules.