A number of early attempts aimed at uncovering autocatalytic reaction systems with potentially prebiotically relevant chemistry have been reported. Breslow's 10 classic finding of autocatalytic behavior in the formose reaction revealed that the achiral product glycolaldehyde catalyzes its own formation (Scheme 3). Glycoaldehdye is achiral, however, and hence its autocatalytic production in the formose reaction cannot lead to homochirality. Prebiotically relevant chiral molecules such as glyceraldehyde are produced in further reactions in this network. Modest enantioselectivity in glyceraldehyde has been observed when the formose reaction is carried out in the presence of chiral amino acids and their derivatives as asymmetric catalysts. 11 However, these catalytic reactions have not been shown to be truly self-replicative and therefore will not result in the emergence of homochirality.