  We look for minimal chiral sets of fermions beyond the standard model that
are anomaly free and, simultaneously, vectorlike particles with respect to
colour SU(3) and electromagnetic U(1). We then study whether the addition of
such particles to the standard model particle content allows for the
unification of gauge couplings at a high energy scale, above $5.0 \times
10^{15}$ GeV so as to be safely consistent with proton decay bounds. The
possibility to have unification at the string scale is also considered.
Inspired in grand unified theories, we also search for minimal chiral fermion
sets that belong to SU(5) multiplets. Restricting to representations up to
dimension 50, we show that some of these sets can lead to gauge unification at
the GUT and/or string scales.
