Summary. A good many number of pre-biotic molecules have been discovered in the star forming regions. Amino acids have also been detected in meteorites that are believed to be formed in the proto-solar system. These imply that the frigid interstellar medium could be the cradle of the formation of bio-molecules, if not of life itself. We present our preliminary results of numerical simulations of the evolution of various chemical species during the star formation. We show that some amount of simple amino acids such as glycine and alanine and DNA bases like adenine may also be formed in the process.

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(*) Biodata: Dr. Sonali Chakrabarti obtained her BSc in 1985 and MSc in 1987 both from Calcutta University. She was awarded her Ph.D. from Jadavpur University in 1996. Her fields of expertise are various aspects of astrochemistry and astrobiology. She has made contributions to resolution of millimeter and microwave instruments. She has several projects on these topics that are funded by the Department of Science and Technology and the Indian Space Research Organization.
Dr. Chakrabarti has been a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (as a CSIR Post doctoral fellow).
Currently she is a senior grade lecturer at the Maharajah Manindra Chandra College and an honorary Reader at the Indian Centre for Space Physics
Her two Ph.D. students A. Das and K. Acharyya both became Mayo Greenberg fellows at Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands. She has published 32 papers in peer-reviewed Journals.

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