Figure 1 summarizes the basic chemistry of formamide and its chemical connection with HCN and ammonium formate (NHHCOO), considering selected examples of preparative and degradative reactions.
The synthesis of purine from formamide was first reported in 1980.  A series of studies building on this observation was started 20 years later: the synthesis of a large panel of prebiotically relevant compounds (including purine, adenine, cytosine, and 4(3H)pyrimidinone) in good yields was reported in 2001. These products were obtained by heating formamide in the presence of simple catalysts such as calcium carbonate (CaCO), silica (SiO), or alumina (AlO).
In addition to nucleobases, sugars, carboxylic acids, amino acids, as well as heterogeneous compounds of various classes, (including urea and carbodiimide) were also synthesized. The catalysts studied include, in addition to those mentioned, titanium oxides, clays, cosmic dust analogues, phosphates, iron sulphide minerals, zirconium minerals, borate minerals, or numerous materials of meteoritic origin  encompassing iron, stony-iron, chondrites, and achondrites meteorites.
Various energy sources, including thermal energy, UV-radiation, irradiation with high-energy (terawatt) laser pulses, or slow protons were tested. Mimics of different formamide-based prebiotic scenarios have been reconstructed and analyzed, including space-wise solar wind irradiation of meteorites, dynamic chemical gardens, and meteorites in aqueous environments.  It has been suggested that the stepwise decrease of the temperature of the prebiotic environment could induce a sequence of strongly non-equilibrium chemical events that led to the emergence of more and more complex species from formamide on the early Earth.
For each studied combination of catalyst/energy source/environment, formamide condensed into a variety of different prebiotically relevant compounds, each combination giving rise to a specific set of relatively complex molecules, usually encompassing several nucleobases, amino acids, and carboxylic acids. The highest level of complexity was attained for the formamide/meteorite system, using proton irradiation as the energy source, where the one-pot synthesis of four nucleosides (uridine, cytidine, adenosine, thymidine) was observed. So far, no other one-carbon atom compound has shown the versatility of products that can be formed from formamide under plausible prebiotic conditions in a one-pot chemistry (see Figure 2). <br />
In addition to its dual function of substrate and solvent in one-pot syntheses affording prebiotic compounds as complex as nucleosides and long aliphatic chains, it has been observed that formamide plays a role in the generation of molecules which are closer to the biological domain. In the presence of a phosphate source (e.g., phosphate minerals), formamide promotes the phosphorylation of nucleosides, leading to the formation of nucleotides, and strongly stimulates the non-enzymatic polymerization of 3’,5’ cyclic nucleotides, leading to the abiotic synthesis of RNA oligomers.  This is the reason why formamide is considered a plausible medium for prebiotic phosphorylation reactions also in the “discontinuous synthesis” scenario of the origin of life. As well as phosphorylation, formamide has been shown to be a competent medium for the production of amino acid derivatives from their simple aldehyde and nitrile precursors, demonstrating that water is not the only solvent that this process can occur in.  Most notably, formamide provides a medium for the prebiotic synthesis of cysteine derivatives, not considered previously considered plausible in strictly aqueous prebiotic environments.