The tiny pantheon known as the Asgard archaea bear traits that hint at how plants, animals and fungi emerged on Earth.

Life may have emerged from a surprisingly simple network of chemical reactions long before cells or genes existed.

How can animate life be formed from inanimate matter? It’s one of the most fascinating enigmas in science because, without this crucial first step, called abiogenesis, there would be no life on Earth.

The transition from simple chemistry to the complex biology of molecules that gave rise to life is a puzzle that scientists ...

The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unraveling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals ...

Half a century ago, a quiet theorist working far from the big Western labs proposed a radical answer to one of science’s ...

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 ...

The origin of life on Earth has always been a mystery. For many years, scientists have looked to the stars, believing that the building blocks of life that set forth evolution here on our planet came ...

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 ...

A new study published in July 2025 tackles one of science's most profound mysteries—how did life first emerge from nonliving matter on early Earth? Using cutting edge mathematical approaches, ...

A team of scientists has discovered a new abiotic pathway for the formation of peptide chains from amino acids -- a key chemical step in the origin of life. The current study provides strong evidence ...

A UB researcher has received a five-year, $3.4 million grant to begin a study that will examine how parents’ mental health and socioeconomic factors impact health disparities at the very beginning ...