DNA Archives

Wearing protective gear against toxic gases, Solange Duhamel stands next to a lava flow during an outing to collect samples of freshly deposited lava rock. Credit Christopher Hamilton

Analog Studies, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Exploration Gear & Tech, Extinction events, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Sample Return

Life On Lava: How Microbes Colonize New Habitats

by Keith CowingDecember 19, 2025December 19, 2025

Life has a way of bouncing back, even after catastrophic events like forest fires or volcanic eruptions. While nature’s resilience to natural disasters has long been recognized, not much is […]

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim conducts research operations for the Noblis /Voyagerr DNA Decryption experiment iss073e0815503 (Sept. 26, 2025) larger image

Astronauts and Explorers, Astropharmacy / Biotechnology, Commercial & Private Sector, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microgravity, Nanotechnology & SynBio, People Of Astrobiology, Space Life Science, Space Stations, Status Report, Tricorders & Sensors

Offworld Genomics Research: DNA Decryption Experiment On ISS

by Keith CowingDecember 15, 2025December 15, 2025

NASA astronaut and Expedition 73 Flight Engineer Jonny Kim shows off research hardware from the Noblis / Voyager DNA Decryption experiment taking place inside the International Space Station’s Harmony module.

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report

All Life Copies DNA Unambiguously Into Proteins. Archaea May Be The Exception.

by Keith CowingDecember 2, 2025December 2, 2025

The beauty of the DNA code is that organisms interpret it unambiguously. Each three-letter nucleotide sequence, or codon, in a gene codes for a unique amino acid that’s added to […]

The “tree” here is the taxonomic tree of the organisms analysed, coloured by major group. The red bars on the outside of the tree show how many species have been sequenced in each Order of organisms. Graphic by Mark Blaxter for DToL. Organism silhouettes from PhyloPic (https://www.phylopic.org/) CCBY-4.0. via Darwin Tree of Life Project

Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

Jumping Genes Help Resolve The Tree Of Life

by Keith CowingNovember 12, 2025November 12, 2025

Genomes are key to unlocking life’s evolutionary history. The presence and absence of certain genetic sequences and mutations can give us clues to the order in which species diverge.

Biophysics, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Nanotechnology & SynBio, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

Simultaneous Synthesis Of All 21 Types Of tRNA In Vitro

by Keith CowingSeptember 30, 2025September 30, 2025

Collaborative research by the University of Tokyo and RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research has led to the development of a new method for simultaneously synthesizing all transfer RNA (tRNA) […]

Visualization of some of the effects of cosmic rays on the DNA of microorganisms and a simplified theory of the process of the double-strand break DNA repair mechanism which causes frequent gene mutations. -- astro-ph.HE

Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Galactic Forcing Increases Origination Of Marine Microplankton

by Keith CowingSeptember 5, 2025September 18, 2025

The continuous flux of Galactic cosmic rays that bombard Earth’s atmosphere creates ionizing radiation that can damage the DNA of living organisms.

Hot spring on Early Earth -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

Origin Of Life Breakthrough: How RNA Might Have Started To Make Proteins On Early Earth

by Keith CowingAugust 28, 2025

Chemists at UCL have shown how two of biology’s most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of life four billion […]

Codons for the amino acids serine and alanine plus one stop codon were eliminated, requiring over 101,000 recoding events. -- MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Nanotechnology & SynBio, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

Synthetic Biology: Syn57 Represents A New Chapter In The Genetic Code Of Life

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2025

The genetic code, which has been nearly universal across all known life for billions of years, utilises 64 triplets of DNA and RNA bases, known as codons, to encode 20 […]

Obelisk alpha has a predicted extensive secondary structure and appears to colonise and speciate within the human gut a) overview of the iterative approach taken in Obelisk discovery, (see methods) b) schematic of the predicted sense consensus secondary structure derived from all non-redundant, 1164 nt Obelisk-ɑs found using SRA-scale k-mer matching (PebbleScout). Predicted open reading frames (ORFs) 1 and 2 (green/yellow), and Shine-Delgarno sequences (purple) shown, c) “jupiter” plot of Obelisk-ɑ coloured as in b), chords illustrate predicted basepairs (basepair probabilities grey, 0.1, to red, 1.0) d) Obelisk-ɑ relative read abundance for six donors (A-G); sequence data from in Lloyd-Price et al., 2019 and time in days from first sample. e) Principal component analysis of sequence variation seen in Obelisk-ɑ reads in Lloyd-Price et al., 2019 (the initial iHMP dataset), grouped by k-means clustering with 5 centres, coloured as in d). biorxiv via PubMed

Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report

Obelisks: Newly-Discovered Viroid-like Colonists Of Human Microbiomes

by Keith CowingAugust 11, 2025August 11, 2025

Editor’s note: researchers were surprised recently when an unexpected and rather novel biological structure was found inside the cells of the human gut. Nicknamed “obelisks” due to their shape, these […]