Throughout Earth’s history, shifts in ocean redox influenced the bioavailability of trace metals, shaping the activity of microorganisms.
Extreme environments impose strong mutation and selection pressures that drive distinctive, yet understudied, genomic adaptations in extremophiles.
The last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) is widely thought to have been an oxygen-respiring organism, arising through endosymbiosis when a free-living bacterium became the mitochondrion.
Nitrogen isotope fractionation (ε15N) in sedimentary rocks has provided evidence for biological nitrogen fixation, and thus primary productivity, on the early Earth.
![Adapted from fig. 1.8 of [2]. Modern protein synthesis; the anticodon at one end of a tRNA molecule binds to its complementary codon in mRNA derived directly from the genome. Sequence-to-sequence translation is not highly parallel, in this model, and the process can be characterized in terms of the Shannon uncertainty in the transmission of information between codon machinery and amino acid machinery. -- biorxiv.org](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Biochemical-%E2%80%98Cambrian-explosion.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Tlusty’s topological analysis of the genetic code suggests ecosystem changes in available metabolic free energy that predated the aerobic transition enabled a punctuated sequence of increasingly complex genetic codes and […]
The origin of life is one of the most compelling questions in science. While experimental prebiotic chemistry has produced a wide range of reactions and plausible pathways, the resulting data […]
How animals evolved complex multicellularity from their unicellular ancestors remains unanswered.
[biorxiv.org] Defining the minimal genetic requirements for cellular life remains a fundamental question in biology. Genomic exploration continually reveals novel microbial lineages, often exhibiting extreme genome reduction, particularly within symbiotic […]
We report on the formation of membranous protocells by self-assembly of lipids on micrometeorites, the extraterrestrial particles that have been continuously reaching the surface of the Earth ever since its […]
Molybdenum (Mo) is an essential nutrient for most living organisms, serving as a cofactor in a diverse array of molybdoenzymes that catalyze key reactions in several elemental cycles.
