2007A&A...473..177W

Our aim is to better understand the complex chemistry of organic molecules in the interstellar medium, leading to the formation of pre-biotic molecules such as amino acids. We have performed a search for the pre-biotic molecules amino acetonitrile (H₂NCH₂CN) and vinyl acetylene (C₂H₃CCH) towards four northern hot core sources using the Onsala 20m telescope. We have determined upper limits to the column density of amino acetonitrile (1-4x10¹³cm^–2) and vinyl acetylene (2-7x10¹⁴cm^–2) in the observed sources. In addition, from the absence of other lines within the observed frequency band, we have further constrained the column density of oxiranecarbonitrile (c-C₃H₃NO) and amino-ethanol (NH₂CH₂CH₂OH) in these sources.