Proton-induced damage on 2-aminooxazole, a potential prebiotic compound.

Among the complex organic molecules detected in space, in the interstellar medium, on meteorites or comets, special interest is devoted to the potentially exobiologic-relevant species. In the hypothesis, widely discussed, of a possible exogen origin of life, the transport of such compounds and their survival is indeed a fundamental question. Recently, suggestion has been made that 2-aminooxazole could be a possible precursor of RNA nucleotides on early earth and its stability to UV radiation or to collisions may be determinant. We have thus undertaken a detailed theoretical study of the charge transfer collision dynamics induced by the impact of 2-aminooxazole with protons, which could be an important process in particular in proton-rich environments. The theoretical treatment has been developed through ab initio quantum chemistry molecular calculations followed by semiclassical collision dynamics. The results are compared to previous investigations on DNA and RNA building blocks in order to extract some qualitative trends in the damage of prebiotic species under spatial radiation.