prebiotic chemistry

Prebiotic chemistry studies the chemical processes that may have led to the origin of life on Earth—reactions that could have produced amino acids, nucleotides, and other building blocks of biology from simpler compounds before living organisms existed.

The field investigates how organic molecules might have formed in early Earth's atmosphere, oceans, or hydrothermal vents: Miller-Urey experiments in prebiotic chemistry showed that lightning could synthesize amino acids from simple gases.