CARELL GROUP Research – Prebiotic Chemistry

The question of how the key building blocks required for chemical, and later, biological evolution were first formed on the early earth remains unclear. The Carell group aims to discover conditions, pathways, and reaction mechanisms via which the purines and pyrimidines could have plausibly originated. The chemistry we explore makes use of natural processes such as wet-dry cycles, as well as prebiotically plausible starting materials such as HCN, malonitrile, CO, H₂O, NaNO₂, formaldehyde, glycolaldehyde, formic acid and formamide.

Depiction of a prebiotically plausible reaction pathway that leads to the formation of purine nucleosides. The starting materials are glycolaldehyde, formaldehyde, NH₄CN, NH₄SCN and malonitrile.