The aim of this proposal is to obtain an atomistic understanding of the adsorption of chiral amino acids on mineral surfaces. Our previous experiments on LOQ and at ILL on D16 used a sensitive gel-phase n-propylammonium-vermiculite with controllable d-spacings of 50-100Å. These show that amino acids have a striking"anti-osmotic" impact on the clay swelling. They also show chiral selectivity of L- over D-histidine and this work is now published in PCCP (DOI:10.1039/C0CP01387K). We now propose to investigate the atomic coordinates of the adsorbed amino acids in the clay interlayer region using isotopically labelled amino acids and by adding to the vermiculite gels, 0.05 solutions of (i) L- , (ii) D-histidine (iii) a D/L-racemic mixture. The research will provide new information on the mechanism of chiral selectivity and self-organization of biomolecules on clay surfaces.