While these studies have not directly addressed chirality, they explore the possible roots of prebiotic self-organizing chemical processes. Indeed, this chemistry takes us back to the very first organic catalytic reaction, reported in 1860 by Justus von Liebig, where acetaldehyde was used as a catalyst to convert cyanogen and water to the diamide of oxalic acid. The Strecker reaction of 1850 proceeds by a similar mechanism to produce amino acids from aldehydes and ammonia. Thus an important chemical platform proceeding through aldehyde-amine hemiaminal intermediates exhibits a dual role as an erstwhile nutrient (reactant) and enabler (catalyst), offering food for thought concerning the emergence of viable autocatalytic cycles as coupled or cascade networks (Scheme 13). Introducing asymmetry into these systems might expand a Frank-type model to incorporate a coupled series of autocatalytic reactions from which homochirality could emerge. Scheme 13. Proposed cycles with carbonyl and amine compounds serving alternatively as catalysts and substrates in a coupled cascade, with the possibility of autocatalytic selfreplication and the amplification of enantiomeric excess.