Grab-and-go missions to asteroids have provided some of the most scientifically valuable samples since the Apollo ...

Hints of ancient microbes in Martian rocks and a revived theory about our cosmic ancestry are forcing scientists to rethink ...

A new study shines a spotlight on sulfur, a chemical element that, while all familiar, has proved surprisingly resistant to scientific efforts in probing its role in the origin of life. Many artists ...

Soda lakes might hold the key to the emergence of life on Earth. These unique environments could have concentrated the phosphorus necessary for the first prebiotic chemical reactions. Phosphorus is a ...

Chemists at University College London 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 ...

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 ...

In an important new paper forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, Robert Shapiro (New York University) argues against the widely held theory that the origin of life began ...

The origin of life on Earth has long remained a mystery. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Cosmic dust may have helped to ...

A team from the University of Illinois has uncovered surprising evolutionary links between the genetic code and tiny protein fragments called dipeptides. By analyzing billions of dipeptide sequences ...

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 ...

Tremendous progress in the field of prebiotic chemistry has shown how simple compounds available on ancient Earth could have given rise to the molecular building blocks of life 1. The current ...