Prebiotic Chemistry: Geochemical Context and Reaction Screening

Prebiotic Chemistry: Geochemical Context and Reaction Screening

The origin of life on Earth is widely believed to have required the reactions of organic compounds and their self- and/or environmental organization. What those compounds were remains open to debate, as do the environment in and process or processes by which they became organized. Prebiotic chemistry is the systematic organized study of these phenomena. It is difficult to study poorly defined p...

Prebiotic chemistry themed issue

The Future of Prebiotic Chemistry

Here is a puzzle: in what area of organic synthesis research are synthetic organic chemists a minority? According to Albert Eschenmoser, it is in the field of prebiotic chemistry: the study of the reactions and molecules that led to the emergence of life on earth. Biologists, mathematicians, and astronomers have traditionally weighed in on this problem proportionally more than organic chemists....

Atmospheric Prebiotic Chemistry and Organic Hazes

Earth's atmospheric composition at the time of the origin of life is not known, but it has often been suggested that chemical transformation of reactive species in the atmosphere was a significant source of prebiotic organic molecules. Experimental and theoretical studies over the past half century have shown that atmospheric synthesis can yield molecules such as amino acids and nucleobases, bu...

Prebiotic chemistry: a new modus operandi.

A variety of macromolecules and small molecules-(oligo)nucleotides, proteins, lipids and metabolites-are collectively considered essential to early life. However, previous schemes for the origin of life-e.g. the 'RNA world' hypothesis-have tended to assume the initial emergence of life based on one such molecular class followed by the sequential addition of the others, rather than the emergence...