MINI REVIEW article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Astrobiology
This article is part of the Research TopicQuantum BiologyView all 10 articles
Chemistry of the origins of life: how prebiotic chemistry can be approached by computational quantum methods
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Fundamental Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, University of São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
- 2Pioneer Science Iniciative, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The origins of life are a fascinating topic and a captivating scientific challenge that involve numerous hypotheses. Computational quantum techniques have been growing, modernizing, and complementing experimental efforts in the field. In this mini review, we briefly summarize some well-known hypotheses on life's emergence and highlight some recent investigations in prebiotic chemistry addressed by computational quantum methods. These include diverse prebiotic scenarios, ranging from thermal reactions to photochemically mediated processes, on early Earth and in astrophysical conditions. By doing so, we emphasize the increasing role of computational quantum chemistry in advancing our understanding of the chemical pathways that may have led to life's origin.
Keywords: Chemical evolution and origin of life, Computational Chemistry, Density functional theory (DFT), prebiotic chemistry, quantum chemistry
Received: 05 Nov 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Quilici, Pires de Sousa and Carmo Braga. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ataualpa Albert Carmo Braga
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.