The question of how life could have emerged is one of the most long-standing mysteries in science. In a new study, the laboratory of LMU Professor Dieter Braun has uncovered an unexpected form of ...

Two separate laboratory breakthroughs have produced RNA molecules that can build copies of themselves or assemble functional structures without any help from proteins or DNA. These results offer the ...

While humans have an esthetic liking for symmetry in everything, nature prefers asymmetric, single-handed forms when it comes to amino acids—the building blocks of proteins, and, by extension, all ...

Chemists at UCL have shown how two of biology’s most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of life four billion years ...

Scientists discover QT45, a self-replicating RNA molecule, offering insights into the origins of life on Earth.

Chemists say they have solved a crucial problem in a theory of life’s beginnings, by demonstrating that RNA molecules can link short chains of amino acids together. The findings, published on 11 May ...

Scientists at UC Berkeley have discovered a microbe that bends one of biology’s most sacred rules. Instead of treating a specific three-letter DNA code as a clear “stop” signal, this methane-producing ...

It's a dogma taught in every introductory biology class: Proteins are composed of combinations of 20 different amino acids, arranged into diverse sequences like words. But researchers trying to ...