Reaction Mechanisms of Hydrogen Cyanide, Formamide, and Related Species in Prebiotic Earth

by Kaylie Headings

Submitted : Spring 2019

The goal of this project was to model how HCN in early earth could undergo reactions to form adenine and H₃CNO, and then H₃CNO could react to form H₅CNO₂. This is relevant to origin of life studies because adenine is one of the nucleotides necessary to make DNA. The goal was accomplished by inserting formulas for these chemicals and their rate of change into an excel document and having the model generate values for the reaction over the course of 3.3 x 10⁸ seconds. Graphs were generated from the excel model which can then display the abundance in which these chemicals would have been present in early earth.  It was shown that this reaction could steadily lead to an increase in the amount of adenine present, although the concentration of adenine remained small compared to the concentration of the other three species.

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