Abiotic and prebiotic phosphorus chemistry

• Main Author: Micheletti, Gabriele <1977>
• Other Authors: Baccolini, Graziano
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: en
• Published: Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna 2011
• Subjects: CHIM/06 Chimica organica
• Online Access: http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/3841/

The chief obstacle to understand the metabolic origin of life or RNA-based life is to identify a plausible mechanism for overcoming the clutter wrought by abiotic chemistry. Probably trough simple abiotic and then prebiotic reactions we could arrive to simple pre-RNA molecules. Here we report a possible preibiotic synthesis for heterocyclic compounds, and a self-assembling process of adenosine phosphates a constituent of RNA. In these processes we use a simple and prebiotic phosphorus cyclic compounds, as P4O10 and its derivatives. The processes are driven by the formation of hypercoordinated species that activate the processes by a factor of 106-8.