Modern cells are complex chemical entities with cytoskeletons, finely regulated internal and external molecules, and genetic ...

The origin of the first living molecules on our planet has long been debated. However, recent experiments are revealing new information about the plausible conditions on the early Earth.

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 ...

Who were our earliest ancestors? The answer could lie in a special group of single-celled organisms with a cytoskeleton similar to that of complex organisms, such as animals and plants. Ten years ago, ...

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 ...

In many submerged regions, murky mud shelters strange life-forms that seem to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of life on Earth. These creatures belong to a domain of life called the archaea ...

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 ...

The study of the origin of life and prebiotic chemistry seeks to elucidate how inanimate chemical systems transitioned into self‐sustaining, evolving entities. Research in this field integrates ...

Two enormous structures that sit at the border between the Earth’s mantle and its core have puzzled scientists for decades, defying reigning theories of how our planet came to be. In a new study ...

The mystery of why life uses molecules with specific orientations has deepened with a discovery that RNA—a key molecule thought to have potentially held the instructions for life before DNA ...

One of the most elegant theories about the origins of life on our planet is that it was kick-started by a delivery from outer space. This idea suggests that prebiotic molecules—the building blocks of ...