Themed collection Prebiotic chemistry and the molecular origins of life

Editorial for the themed issue on ‘Prebiotic Chemistry and the Molecular Origins of Life’. The dictum Omne vivum ex vivo is misleading: life must have arisen from non-living matter.

From a geochemical perspective, significant amounts of pure formamide (HCONH₂) would have likely been rare on the early Earth.

This review considers how photochemistry and sunlight-driven reactions can abiotically generate prebiotic molecules necessary for the evolution of life.

The significance of experiments that claim to simulate the properties of prebiotic small peptides and polypeptides as models of the polymers that may have preceded proteins is critically addressed.

Submarine hydrothermal vents are generally considered as the likely habitats for the origin and evolution of early life on Earth.

Main directions for future computational studies on the origin of the first nucleic acids is outlined.

A systematic computational study of non-radiative decay pathways following UV excitation of selected heterocycles, DNA bases, nucleosides and base-pairs in the gas phase.

The free nucleobases and mononucleotides of RNA do not form Watson–Crick base pairs in water, a fact that presents several challenges for the prebiotic synthesis of RNA.

Cysteine containing dipeptide metal affinities do not follow the Irving–Williams series but rather follow the concentration trends found in seawater.

Barbituric acid and 2,4,6-triaminopyrimidine dissipate ultraviolet radiation efficiently as heat to the environment, thus supporting their feasibility as prebiotic ancestors to the RNA nucleobases.

The annealing process for pre-treatment of pyrite surfaces is a critical parameter in promoting ordering on the surface and it has chemical implications on the cystine adsorbed molecules.

Nucleobases exhibit protection against UV photodamage by rapid internal conversion to the ground state. This property may have led to prebiotic photochemical selection.

Nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations elucidate the ultrafast photodeactivation mechanisms of alternative nucleobase isocytosine.

THz spectroscopy provides an exquisitely sensitive probe into the long-range structure and segregation of mixtures of two primary interstellar ice constituents: carbon dioxide and methanol.

The fluorescence properties of pyrrolocytosine, a cytosine analogue, are investigated using high level ab initio methods, and they are found to be affected by hydrogen bonding to water molecules, as well as by pi-stacking with guanine.

The reaction pathways for the prebiotic formation of nucleobases are complex and lead to the formation of a mixture of products.

The photodynamic properties of molecules determine their ability to survive in harsh radiation environments.

Shallow temperature gradients across porous rocks drive highly efficient molecular accumulation processes while simultaneously subjecting them to frequent temperature oscillations.

We demonstrate a synthesis of the meteoritic mineral schreibersite (Fe,Ni)₃P, study its surface chemistry, and show prebiotic phosphorylation.

A model system illustrates how the coupling efficiency of a physical non-equilibrium to a chemical reaction is affected by the relative timescales of the respective kinetics.

Protonated diazines have very short excited state lifetimes.

Nucleotides containing barbituric acid were synthesized and polymerized under prebiotically relevant conditions. This study demonstrates the plausibility of the emergence of primitive informational polymers from ribonucleotides with alternate heterocycles.

The temperature optimum of a triphosphorylation ribozyme shifted to lower temperature, after size reduction and fragmentation.

Computational studies on the reaction of CH₂NH, CO₂ and H₂ show the possible interstellar formation of glycine in both hot-cores and cold interstellar clouds.