Publications - Published papers

Please find below publications of our group. Currently, we list 565 papers. Some of the publications are in collaboration with the group of Sonja Prohaska and are also listed in the publication list for her individual group. Access to published papers (access) is restricted to our local network and chosen collaborators. If you have problems accessing electronic information, please let us know:

©NOTICE: All papers are copyrighted by the authors; If you would like to use all or a portion of any paper, please contact the author.

Navigating the Chemical Space of HCN Polymerization and Hydrolysis: Guiding Graph Grammars by Mass Spectrometry Data

Jakob L. Andersen, Tommy Andersen, Christoph Flamm, Martin M. Hanczyc, Daniel Merkle, and Peter F. Stadler

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Status: Published


Entropy 15:4066–4083 (2013)

Abstract


Polymers of hydrogen cyanide and their hydrolysis products constitute a plausible, but still poorly understood proposal for early prebiotic chemistry on Earth. HCN polymers are generated by the interplay of more than a dozen distinctive reaction mechanisms and form a highly complex mixture. Here we use a computational model based on graph grammars as a means of exploring the chemical spaces of HCN polymerization and hydrolysis. A fundamental issue is to understand the combinatorial explosion inherent in large, complex chemical systems. We demonstrate that experimental data, here obtained by mass spectrometry, and computationally predicted free energies together can be used to guide the exploration of the chemical space and makes it feasible to investigate likely pathways and chemical motifs even in potentially open-ended chemical systems.

Keywords


hydrogen cyanide, graph grammars, chemical space, mass spectrometry, chemical motif, polymerization, autocatalysis