Probing the nature of the symmetry breaking process has been and remains of great fundamental interest. Deviations from racemic product ee are often observed in the Soai reaction carried out in the absence of added product, in most cases giving a stochastic or near stochastic distribution of ee values. A key point is to characterize the threshold chiral influence initiating the reaction above which the reaction becomes directed with fidelity toward one hand or the other of the reaction product. The Soai reaction can be initiated from a variety of physical and chemical chiral sources. Perhaps most striking was Soai's studies showing that molecules exhibiting chirality by virtue only of isotopes of the same atom (e.g., H/D, 12 C/ 13 C, 14 N/ 15 N, O/ 18 O) can provide sufficient chiral influence to initiate and dictate the stereochemical outcome of the reaction. In further investigation of the role of these isotopically chiral initiators, we demonstrated that in the initial stages of the reaction, these initiators in fact inhibit the autocatalytic pathway by complexing with reaction product formed in the uncatalyzed background reaction. Once the initiator is consumed by saturating as a 2:1 product:initiator complex, subsequently formed reaction product can act as an autocatalyst. A slight difference in stability of diastereomeric product initiator complexes leads to a slight imbalance in the free product enantiomeric excess, which is then amplified in further autocatalytic cycles, as depicted in Scheme 10. The fact that the Soai reaction can be directed with fidelity by barely measurable chiral sources demonstrates that the identity of the directing force may is less critical than is the efficiency of the reaction product in both catalyzing its own formation and in suppressing formation of its opposite enantiomer.