Tracking the organic refractory component from interstellar dust to comets.

The abundance and composition of complex organic (carbonaceous) material in the interstellar dust is followed as the dust evolves in its cyclic evolution between diffuse and dense clouds. Interstellar extinction, laboratory and space analog experiments, dust infrared absorption spectra, the cosmic abundance of the condensible atoms, and space and ground-based observations of comet dust are used to impose constraints on the organic dust component as mantles on silicate cores.