Dispersion in DLA metallicities and deuterium abundances

Recent chemical abundance measurements of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs) revealed a large intrinsic scatter in their metallicities. We discuss a semi-analytic model that was specifically designed to study this scatter by tracing the chemical evolution of the interstellar matter in small regions of the Universe with different mean density, from over- to underdense regions. It is shown that different histories of structure formation in these regions are reflected in the chemical properties of the proto-galaxies. We also address deuterium abundance measurements, which constitute a complementary probe of the star formation and infall histories.