Early Chemistry
Follow the story from prebiotic organic chemistry to amphiphiles, compartments, molecular bias, and the earliest proto-structures.
Organic Chemistry Before Biology
How carbon-based chemistry could happen before living cells existed, showing that biology inherited and refined earlier chemical possibilities.
Concentration & Retention Problem
Why useful molecules could form and still be lost through dilution, diffusion, instability, and failure to meet each other again.
Mineral Surfaces & Catalytic Scaffolds
How mineral surfaces may have concentrated molecules, oriented reactions, and lowered reaction barriers in early chemistry.
Selection by Stability
How more stable or more easily re-formed molecules can accumulate, while fragile products vanish from the chemical scene.
Amino Acids Forming Abiotically
How amino acids may arise through non-living chemistry under the right mix of small molecules, energy inputs, and reactive intermediates.
Sugars via Formose-Type Chemistry
How simple sugars can arise through abiotic chemistry, and why sugar formation is both promising and chemically unstable.
Peptide Bond Difficulty
Why linking amino acids together is difficult, especially in watery environments where the reaction often runs in the opposite direction.
Fatty Acids & Amphiphiles
Why amphiphilic molecules matter: they contain both water-attracting and water-avoiding regions and can self-organize into boundaries.
Micelles, Membranes & Compartmentalization
How amphiphiles self-assemble into micelles and membrane-like structures that trap molecules and create local reaction spaces.
Molecules of Life
The main chemical families that later become central to life: amino acids, sugars, lipids, nucleic-acid-related building blocks, and reactive intermediates.
Chirality & Chemical Bias
Why molecular handedness matters, and how small chemical biases may have shaped the versions of molecules that life later preferred.
Proto-Structures
How repeating cycles, catalytic networks, compartments, and persistent assemblies may have formed semi-organized systems before true cells.
Quiz
What have you learned about early chemistry?