Microbes that are used for health, agricultural, or other applications need to be able to withstand extreme conditions, and ideally the manufacturing processes used to make tablets for long-term storage. […]
Ice is believed to have played a crucial role in the emergence of life. One reason is that organic molecules can be excluded into the gaps between the crystal lattice […]
Editor’s note: as we send increasingly sophisticated astrobiology probes – to more places – often at much greater distances – they will need to be able to do more and […]
The central dogma at the core of molecular biology states that information flows from DNA to RNA and then to protein. Our research seeks to introduce a conceptually novel approach […]
Recently, cyanobacteria have gained attention in space exploration to support long-term crewed missions via Bioregenerative Life Support Systems. In this frame, cyanobacteria would provide biomass and profitable biomolecules through oxygenic […]
![The logic of self-replicating living “machines”. Cells reproduce through a complex process that uses DNA as a set of instructions but requires also DNA to be replicated. In von Neumann’s theory (a), a formal machine capable of copying itself would require a set of instructions to guide the construction of a new machine under some controlled states such that instructions also get replicated. In biology, one crucial component of the cellular translation machinery is the ribosome (b), made of two subunits (RibLU and RibSU) that “read” RNA strings to synthesise proteins, playing the role of the Constructor. In a molecular, embodied implementation of cell reproduction, self-organised interactions between a compartment, metabolism and information must interact. An example of a simple implementation is shown in (c) for a synthetic cell involving a compartment coupled to double-stranded polymers and a minimal metabolism (adapted from [127]). Here, a precursor pL is transformed into lipids (L) that allow membrane growth until some instability triggers division. -- preprints.org](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Fundamental-Constraints-To-The-Logic-Of-Living-Systems.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
It has been argued that the historical nature of evolution makes it a highly path-dependent process. Under this view, the outcome of evolutionary dynamics could have resulted in organisms with […]
NASA-supported researchers have used a laboratory technique called directed evolution to create an RNA enzyme that is capable of carrying out RNA polymerase activity. In living cells, protein polymerases catalyze […]
Some species of tardigrades are highly and unusually resilient to various extreme conditions fatal to most other forms of life.
Researchers have engineered nanosized cubes that spontaneously form a two-dimensional checkerboard pattern when dropped on the surface of water. The work, published in Nature Communications, presents a simple approach to […]
![An unrooted maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree of the catalytic subunit (HydA) of [FeFe] hydrogenases and the hybrid hydrogenases. The tree was constructed based on 3,677 amino acid sequences using the LG + C20 + R + F model. The numbers at the branches indicate the aLRT (approximate likelihood ratio test) and ultrafast bootstrap (within bracket) support values, each with 1,000 replicates. The scale bar corresponds to the expected number of substitutions per site. Colored circles at the tip indicate sequences from eukaryotes and major archaeal groups. All other sequences are from bacteria. -- Cell](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/How-Archaea-The-Third.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion years ago, by showing how they use hydrogen gas.
