IPOTESI SULLA SINTESI DEGLI AMINOACIDI COME MOLECOLE PREBIOTICHE NEL PRIMORDIALE ECOSISTEMA

Formamide is an organic molecule, H2NCOH,that in the last years has attracted a lot of interst among the scientits who are studing life. Formamide is the simplest naturally occuring amide. Contains in its structure all the elements which are required for the synthesis of biomolecules. In fact this molecule seems the precursor of reactions leading to the formation of the main molecules of life like: nucleic basis, nucleic acid and nitrogen bases. We want to study how starting from the simplest molecules in the stratosphere, like H2O, CO2, NH3 and HCN (finding them for example in the surface of meteorites or in some celestial bodies in the solar system) formamide was formed. We will never know exactly how life originated, but we will be able to reconstruct the plausible steps and the physical-chemical rules on which the first reactions were based. We consider the easier molecules because the most common elements of the universe were Hydrogen, Oxigen, Nitrogen and Carbon, we also know that the most abundant three-atoms organic compound in interstellar environment is HCN and the most three-atoms inorganic is H2O. This work is a part of a project on the origin of life named “CAOS in STARS”, in which three teams of reaserch are involved: the first one is an experimental team that works with silicate, and they are measuring a series of IR and Raman spectra to classified and study the spectroscopic signals due to silacates surfaces; the other two teams are theoretical and they study the interaction between formamide and a silicates surface and an ice surface; they try to hypothesize the possible reactions patterns leading to formamide and calculate the IR and Raman spectrum to be compared with the experimental ones. This thesis is theoretical and the target is to present some research of some reaction between some simple molecules, like H2O,HCN , with an ice surface and we want to found the reaction that form formamide and in particular nucleic bases. The software that might be use for modelling this reactions is Crystal, a computational program that mimics the reaction that we want to study and can provide useful information and insights for the experimental counterpart.