Prospects for understanding the origin of the RNA world / Gerald F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel -- Reading the palimpsest: contemporary biochemical data and the RNA world / Steven A. Benner ... [et al.] ...

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 ...

Life on Earth may have started with a molecule that still runs our cells today. As researchers probe ribonucleic acid in the lab and in ancient rocks and space dust, RNA is yielding clues that are far ...

The RNA-peptide world hypothesis postulates the early co-evolution of RNA and peptides that led to the emergence of non-enzymatic RNA replication and peptide synthesis. Although nucleotides and amino ...

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 ...

Trinucleotide triphosphates act as both chaperones and as substrates for primer-free RNA synthesis by a polymerase ribozyme. They invade and maintain the single-stranded state of RNA strands, thereby ...

Genes are not passed on exclusively from parents to their offspring. Some are mobile and can also jump to other species, as ...

Two separate laboratory breakthroughs have produced RNA molecules that can build copies of themselves or assemble functional structures without any help from proteins or DNA. These results offer the ...

Recent research showed that an artificially constructed RNA self-replicating system modeling primitive life at the origin of life evolved to become more prone to extinction under certain experimental ...

Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is ...

One of Yuka’s legs, illustrating the exceptional preservation of the lower part of the leg after the skin had been removed, which enabled recovery of ancient RNA molecules. Photo credit: Valeri ...