Identification of interstellar amino acetonitrile in the hot molecular core G10.47＋0.03: Possible glycine survey candidate for the future.

Amino acids are the essential keys that contribute to the study of the formation of life. The simplest amino acid, glycine (NH2CH2COOH), has been searched for a long time in the interstellar medium, but all surveys of glycine have failed. Since the detection of glycine in the interstellar medium was extremely difficult, we aimed to search for the precursor of glycine. After detailed searches of the individual prebiotic molecular species, we successfully identified the emission lines of possible glycine precursor molecule amino acetonitrile (NH2CH2CN) towards the hot molecular core G10.47 + 0.03 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array. The estimated statistical column density of amino acetonitrile was (9.10 ± 0.7) × 10 cm with rotational temperature (T) 122 ± 8.8 K. The estimated fractional abundance of amino acetonitrile was 7.01 × 10. We found that the estimated fractional abundance of NH2CH2CN fairly agrees with the theoretical value predicted by the three-phase warm-up model from Garrod (2013).