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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Compressing a type of single-celled microorganism makes it develop into a multicellular tissue-like structure with different cell types. This suggests that pressure can help drive key evolutionary ...

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 ...

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