[Nature Biotechnology] Microbial symbiosis drives the functional and phylogenomic diversification of life on Earth yet remains underexplored because of culturing challenges.
Origin & Evolution of Life
Posted inBiophysics
How A Deep-sea Protein Adapts To An Extreme Environment
[Kyushu University] Life in the deep sea is under immense pressure—literally. Such extreme conditions can disrupt the delicate structures of proteins essential to life. Yet somehow, the proteins in deep-sea […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
The History Of Enzyme Evolution Embedded In Metabolism
[PNAS]. Whereas phylogenetic reconstructions are a primary record of protein evolution, it is unknown whether the deep history of enzymes is encoded at higher levels of biological organization.
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Structure Of An RNA polymerase Ribozyme Replication Complex
[biorxiv.org] Life began with the emergence of a molecule that could replicate its own genetic material, a task plausibly mediated by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase ribozyme.
![Left: Average ocean fraction, calculated assuming a seawater freezing point of −1.8°𝐶 for Cases 1 and 3 and 0°𝐶 for Case 2. White shows the ice, and blue ocean. Middle: The mean near-surface air temperatures. Shown within the black contours are the regions where these vary between above and below freezing over the course of a single Earth year. Right: The mean surface temperatures. Also shown within the black contours are the regions where these vary between above and below freezing over the course of a single Earth year: these regions are narrower than the air ‘perifreezing zone’.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sea-Ice.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inWater/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Sea Ice As An Origin Of Life Location For Hycean And Ocean Worlds
[astro-ph.EP] Water worlds with potential deep oceans are at the forefront of currently observable exoplanetary habitability.
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology
Carbon and Sulfur Isotopes of Microfossils and Pyrites from Neoarchean Cherts: Microbial Diversity in an Ancient Deep-Marine Environment
[Astrobiology (Journal) via PubMed] The 2.52 Ga Gamohaan Formation in South Africa offers critical insights into microbial ecosystems that inhabited deep-marine environments during the late Archean.
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Auroral Belts As Magnetically Localized Reactors For Prebiotic Chemistry On Early Earth
[Biosystems] Most models of prebiotic chemistry emphasize globally distributed or widely acting energy sources, including ultraviolet radiation, lightning, impacts, and energetic particles.
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
The Emergence Of Life In The Light Of Evolution
[q-bio.PE] The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life s defining feature is evolution.
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
ReactionAtlas: Ab Origine Exploration Of Chemical Reaction Networks With Machine Learning
[cs.LG] Mapping a chemical reaction network, the graph of minima and transition states (TS) and the elementary reactions connecting them, is the natural language of chemistry, from catalysis to combustion […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Prebiotic Cationic Amino Acids Support Formation Of An Ancient Protein Fold
[biorxiv.org] The evolutionary basis for the selection of the standard proteinogenic amino acids remains elusive, particularly for the long cationic amino acids, lysine and arginine, which were likely scarce in […]