Approaching life in a test tube with prebiotic chemistry

The emergence of life on our planet occurred somewhere before 3.48 billion years ago, and was predated by a poorly defined period of appearance and accumulation of chemical intermediates commonly known as biomolecules - which includes amino acids, lipids, sugars and components of genetic polymers. While no fossils are known to science from that period of Earth's development, prebiotic chemistry tried to experimentally answer the question: which chemical processes, and under which conditions, could provide our planet with biomolecules in sufficient quantity and structural diversity to enable spontaneous life formation. Here, we present a chronological overview of the hypotheses that have driven the development of prebiotic chemistry, and of seminal experiments which were intended to prove or disprove these hypotheses.