[ACS Central Science] Complex organic molecules in interstellar ices and carbonaceous asteroids record key steps in the chemical evolution toward life, yet the origin of branched carbonyl compounds a fundamental […]
Origin & Evolution of Life
Posted inWater/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
How Ocean Chemistry On Earth Helped Life Keep Breathing
[UC Riverside] Scientists have helped solve a longstanding mystery about how Earth remained habitable after oxygen first accumulated in its atmosphere more than 2 billion years ago, providing evidence that […]
Posted inBiochemistry & Organic Chemistry
Uncatalyzed Guanosine Phosphorylation under Potentially Prebiotic Conditions
[Chem EurJ] The phosphorylation of nucleosides and their subsequent polymerization are key issues in the study of the Origins of Life. How these chemical processes took place on primitive Earth […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Computational Modeling Of An RNA-peptide World
[biorxiv.org] Emergence and evolution of functional RNA and protein structures are the central problems for understanding the origin of life.
Posted inExtremeophiles and Extreme Environments
Hot Spring Organism Breaks Record For Heat Tolerance Of Complex Life
[Cell Press] A tiny, single-celled organism can thrive at temperatures that would kill all other known complex life.
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
New Study Pinpoints When Early Earth May Have Become Ready for Life’s Chemistry
[PSI] Conditions on the early Earth may have become stable enough to sustain the chemistry associated with the origins of life around 4.33 billion years ago, according to new research […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Prebiotic Peptide Formation Triggered By Urea-rich Warm Little Ponds On Early Earth
[Bioorganic Chemistry]. In the study of the origin of life, the polymerization of amino acids into peptides in water faces significant thermodynamic barriers, often referred to as the “water problem.”
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Do Himalayan-style Mountains Lie Under The Antarctic ice: Implication For The Gondwana Supermountains, The Rise Of Oxygen And The Cambrian Explosion?
[Earth and Planetary Science Letters] Analyses of detrital zircons from Antarctica show that its tectonics were dominated by Himalayan-style mountains, the roots of which now underlie the ice sheet.
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Tracing 700 Million Years Of Cell Evolution
[KAUST] Publishing in Nature Communications, a KAUST-led team has developed the AI tool Unify to help scientists compare similar cell types across distant species[1]. This comparison can help researchers assess […]
Posted inGenomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics
The Variability Of Evolvability: Properties Of Dynamic Fitness Landscapes Determine How Phenotypic Variability Evolves
[PNAS] The magnitude and shape of phenotypic variation depends on properties of the genotype-to-phenotype (GP) map, which itself can evolve over time. The evolution of GP maps is particularly interesting […]