Hydrogen Cyanide Polymerization: A Preferred Cosmochemical Pathway

C. N. Matthews. (1992), JBIS, 45, pp.43-48

Refcode: 1992.45.43

Abstract:

Hydrogen cyanide polymers – heterogeneous black solids -may have been among the earliest naturally occurring macromolecules, as foreseen by Pfluger over a century ago when he surmised that, on the new born Earth, “cyanogen and its compounds had plenty of time and opportunity to follow their great tendency to transformation and polymerization and by the addition of oxygen and later of water and salts to change to a labile protein, which constitutes living matter.” This long suspected connection between cyanide, proteins and life is here explored through a discussion of HCN polymerization and its significance for prebiotic and extraterrestrial chemistry.