Basic prebiotic chemistry

Before life could appear on a planet, atoms have to organise themselves into complex biological molecules such as proteins, RNA, or DNA. Such elaborated structures can't appear by themselves at once, they result from a complex chemical evolution, starting with the simplest organic compounds. At some point, at some yet-to-be-defined stage of complexity and matter organisation, an important step is made and chemistry turns into biology.
Dr Hervé Cottin's lecture is devoted to the study of prebiotic chemistry; it focuses on the very first steps of the chemical evolution: the synthesis of the building blocks of the molecular engine of any known living organism on Earth. Here we consider how atoms can spontaneously combine to make molecules.
In the first part of this lecture living systems are dismantled into more elemental fragments: organic molecules. To address the origin of life, the next question would be how those fragments can be synthesized in an abiotic manner. After a short historical review about the chemistry of life different tracks are explored: an endogenous production of the molecules of life, within the Earth atmosphere or in the depths of primitive oceans, or an exogenous source of prebiotic molecules through space delivery via meteorites and comets. The chemical pathways of synthesis of the building blocks of life are then described.