The question of how life appeared on Earth has intrigued generations. Some researchers are now putting forward an unexpected ...

A team from the University of Illinois has uncovered surprising evolutionary links between the genetic code and tiny protein ...

In a new peer reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor is the single life form that branched into ...

In a new book, astrophysicist Mario Livio describes how the existence of life on Earth can be traced back to an RNA-based “protocell.” The following is an excerpt from Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest ...

How did the building blocks of life come together to spawn the first organisms? It's one of the most longstanding questions in biology — and scientists just got a major clue. In a new study published ...

Few questions have captivated humankind more than the origin of life on Earth. How did the first living cells come to exist? How did these early protocells develop the structural membranes necessary ...

The question of life’s origin on Earth has long intrigued scientists, with a growing body of research now suggesting it may ...

The origin of life on Earth has been mulled over by scientists for centuries. We now know that life’s building blocks are RNA, amino acids, and cells. But if life originated from the primordial ooze ...

In living organisms today, complex molecules like RNA and DNA are constructed with the help of enzymes. So how did these molecules form before life (and enzymes) existed? Why did some molecules end up ...