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 ...

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 ...

Researchers demonstrated how amino acids could spontaneously attach to RNA under early Earth-like conditions using thioesters, providing a long-sought clue to the origins of protein synthesis. This ...

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 ...

For decades, scientists have chased a mystery about how proteins’ building blocks first hooked up with RNA, the molecule carrying life’s code. Now, a team of chemists at University College London (UCL ...

Breakthrough results in first fluorescent sensors capable of detecting glycine dynamics inside living cells at single-cell resolution.

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...

Gamma radiation can convert methane into a wide variety of products at room temperature, including hydrocarbons, oxygen-containing molecules, and amino acids, reports a research team. This type of ...

For decades, amino acids have been added to medical formulations like insulin as stabilizers: these small molecules keep proteins (i.e. larger particles) from interacting in undesirable ways. And for ...