A 45-nucleotide strand of RNA can now synthesize both its mirror-image complement and a copy of itself, bringing scientists closer than ever to demonstrating how life could have emerged from chemistry ...

One of the greatest mysteries of our planet is how a soup of lifeless chemicals transformed into the first living cell. There are several competing theories about where this happened, from frozen ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." For 400 million years, a leading hypothesis claims, Earth was an “RNA World,” meaning that life must’ve ...

Researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge have discovered a ribozyme that is shockingly small, yet ...

The discovery of catalytic RNA transformed our understanding of life's beginnings. Clare Sansom explores how the RNA world ...

Human norovirus, a positive-strand RNA virus that is the leading cause of viral gastroenteritis accounting for an estimated 685 million cases and approximately 212,000 deaths globally per year, has no ...

Chemists at UCL and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth – a key process in the origin of life. Scientists ...