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The physical and chemical properties of prestellar cores are the initial
conditions of the star formation process, so they need to be accurately
gauged to deeply understand how young stars and proto-planteary systems
form and evolve. In the past few years there has been a tremendous
improvement in our understanding of these objects, thanks to observations
of millimeter and sub-millimeter dust continuum and molecular line emission.
In this talk, I plan to first review observational studies of prestellar cores
and show the measured physical and chemical characteristics. In the second
part, I will comment on the observed chemical differentiation and the current
challenges of chemical models, including their main sources of uncertainty.
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