Life depends on a partnership between RNA, which stores instructions, and proteins, which do the work of building and running cells. But how this partnership began has long puzzled scientists. To make ...

Researchers demonstrated how amino acids could spontaneously attach to RNA under early Earth-like conditions using thioesters, providing a long-sought clue to the origins of protein synthesis. This ...

Scientists have discovered a "cosmic factory" for producing the building blocks of life, amino acids. The team discovered that when icy comets collide into a planet, amino acids can be produced. These ...

In a peer-reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the single life form that branched into ...