The origin of life on Earth has long been a mystery that has eluded scientists. A key question is how much of the history of life on Earth is lost […]
Although Mars presents a barren, dusty landscape with no signs of life so far, its geological features such as deltas, lakebeds, and river valleys strongly suggest a past where water […]
Pentoses are essential carbohydrates in the metabolism of modern lifeforms, but their availability during early Earth is unclear since these molecules are unstable.
The Hayabusa2 space mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) returned home with samples of the asteroid Ryugu that orbits the Sun between Earth and Mars.
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 […]
Charles Darwin’s landmark opus, On the Origin of the Species, ends with a beautiful summary of his theory of evolution, “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with […]
Chemists studying how life started often focus on how modern biopolymers like peptides and nucleic acids contributed, but modern biopolymers don’t form easily without help from living organisms. A possible […]
Most effort in origins of life research is focused on understanding the prebiotic formation of biological building blocks. However, it is possible early biological evolution relied on different chemical structures […]
Presently, Earth is the only known location where life exists in the Universe. This year the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three astronomers who proved, almost 20 years […]
Biology encodes information in DNA and RNA, which are complex molecules finely tuned to their functions. But are they the only way to store hereditary molecular information? Some scientists believe […]
