Prebiotic Chemistry
How did the first building blocks of life form from simple molecules on the early Earth? Explore the chemical reactions that turn water, carbon dioxide, and minerals into amino acids, nucleotides, sugars, and lipids — the molecular alphabet of all living things.
Understanding Prebiotic Chemistry
Before life existed, Earth's atmosphere was rich in simple gases — CO₂, N₂, H₂O vapour, CH₄, NH₃, and HCN. Energy from lightning, UV radiation, and volcanic heat drove these molecules to combine into more complex organic compounds. This process is called prebiotic synthesis, and it's the very first step on the road to life.
Key Experiments & Hypotheses
Miller-Urey Experiment (1953)
Stanley Miller and Harold Urey simulated early Earth conditions by passing electrical sparks through a mixture of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. Within days, amino acids formed — proving that life's building blocks can arise from simple chemistry.
Hydrothermal Vents
Deep-sea alkaline vents create natural proton gradients and concentrate minerals like iron-sulfur clusters. These conditions catalyse organic synthesis and may have been the cradles where prebiotic chemistry first produced complex molecules.
UV-Driven Photochemistry
Before the ozone layer, intense ultraviolet light reached Earth's surface. While UV can destroy molecules, it can also drive key reactions — especially the synthesis of nucleotide precursors from HCN and water, as shown by John Sutherland's work.
Mineral Catalysis
Clay minerals like montmorillonite and iron-sulfur surfaces (pyrite, greigite) act as natural catalysts. They concentrate reactants, lower activation energies, and template the formation of polymers like peptides and RNA strands.
AI Analysis Tools
Pathway Discovery
Search for novel synthesis routes from simple molecules (H₂O, CO₂, NH₃, HCN, H₂S) to amino acids, nucleobases, sugars, and lipids using graph-neural-network guided exploration.
GNNRetrosynthesisMonte Carlo Tree SearchYield Optimisation
Use Bayesian optimisation to find temperature, pH, mineral catalyst, and concentration conditions that maximise monomer yield in the reaction network.
Bayesian OptGaussian ProcessThermodynamic Feasibility
Evaluate Gibbs free energy (ΔG) along every branch of the reaction network. Highlight kinetically trapped states and suggest catalytic bypasses.
ΔG PredictionTransition StateMineral Catalyst Screening
Screen mineral surfaces (pyrite, montmorillonite, zeolites, iron-sulfur clusters) for catalytic activity using ML-predicted adsorption energies.
DFT SurrogateAdsorption Energy