Detection and prebiotic chemistry of possible glycine precursor molecule methylenimine towards the hot molecular core G10.47+0.03

Abstract

Amino acids are essential for the synthesis of protein. Amino acids contain both amine (R$-$NH$_{2}$) and carboxylic acid (R$-$COOH) functional groups, which help to understand the possible formation mechanism of life in the universe. Among the 20 types of amino acids, glycine (NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH) is known as the simplest non-essential amino acid. In the last 40 years, all surveys of NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH in the interstellar medium, especially in the star-formation regions, have failed at the millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths. We aimed to identify the possible precursors of NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH, because it is highly challenging to identify NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH in the interstellar medium. Many laboratory experiments have suggested that methylenimine (CH$_{2}$NH) plays a key role as a possible precursor of NH$_{2}$CH$_{2}$COOH in the star-formation regions via the Strecker synthesis reaction. After spectral analysis using the local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) model, we successfully identified the rotational emission lines of CH$_{2}$NH towards the hot molecular core G10.47+0.03 using the Atacama Compact Array (ACA). The estimated column density of CH$_{2}$NH towards G10.47+0.03 is (3.40$\pm$0.2)$\times$10$^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$ with a rotational temperature of 218.70$\pm$20 K, which is estimated from the rotational diagram. The fractional abundance of CH$_{2}$NH with respect to H$_{2}$ towards G10.47+0.03 is 2.61$\times$10$^{-8}$. We found that the derived abundance of CH$_{2}$NH agree fairly well with the existing two-phase warm-up chemical modelling abundance value of CH$_{2}$NH. We discuss the possible formation pathways of CH$_{2}$NH within the context of hot molecular cores, and we find that CH$_{2}$NH is likely mainly formed via neutral-neutral gas-phase reactions of CH$_{3}$ and NH radicals towards G10.47+0.03.