Editor’s note: this is an excerpt: “From Science Fiction To Science Fact” originally published by the U.S. Department of State
DNA
Timeline Of DNA Sequencing Technology On The International Space Station
Bacteria can be identified by their unique biological blueprint, contained within molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
Tricorder Tech: Breakthrough Increases DNA Detection Sensitivity By 100 Times
UMass Amherst researchers have pushed forward the boundaries of biomedical engineering one hundredfold with a new method for DNA detection with unprecedented sensitivity.
Tricorder Tech: Translation As A Biosignature
Life on Earth relies on mechanisms to store heritable information and translate this information into cellular machinery required for biological activity. In all known life, storage, regulation, and translation are […]
Life Detection Techniques Inspired By Developments And Tools In Physical And Biological Sciences
Human imagination has long been captivated by the pursuit of life outside of Earth. Is life a phenomenon that extends beyond the limits of Earth, or are humans alone in […]
Discovery Of Novel Primitive Xeno Nucleic Acids As Alternative Genetic Polymers
The chemical origin of life on Earth is a puzzle that scientists have been trying to piece together for decades. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain how life came […]
Tricorder Tech: Researchers Slow Down And Scan Individual DNA Molecules
Editor’s note: If you are going to investigate genomic information in the field or in a laboratory – the more you know – the more you know. Nanopore technology is […]
The RNA-DNA World And The Emergence Of DNA-encoded Heritable Traits
The RNA world hypothesis confers a central role to RNA molecules in information encoding and catalysis.
What Did Earth’s Earliest Animals Look Like?
For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago.
Metagenome Mining And Functional Analysis Reveal Oxidized Guanine DNA Repair At The Lost City Hydrothermal Field
The GO DNA repair system protects against GC → TC mutations by finding and removing oxidized guanine. The system is mechanistically well understood but its origins are unknown. We searched […]
