Life may have emerged from a surprisingly simple network of chemical reactions long before cells or genes existed.

The transition from simple chemistry to the complex biology of molecules that gave rise to life is a puzzle that scientists ...

For decades, scientists have scoured the skies and planetary surfaces for evidence that life might exist beyond Earth. New ...

Exactly how life first emerged from non-living matter is one of the most enduring mysteries of science. In a new study, Japanese scientists have created self-replicating protocells in the lab, which ...

A team of researchers studied the properties of membranes to understand how these cellular structures influenced the chemistry of life on Earth as it began. How life arose remains a looming question ...

When NASA scientists opened the sample return canister from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample mission in late 2023, they found something astonishing. Dust and rock collected from the asteroid Bennu ...

“The elements are like the alphabet of life. The language of life is created from the right combination of letters or characters.” This is how chemistry professor Chris Chang sees chemical biology, as ...

It may seem easy to distinguish whether something is alive or not. You are alive, as is your teacher, and the trees you see on your way to school. Your desk and chair are not alive, and neither are ...

LIFE ON EARTH may have originated with DNA's cousin RNA, but how the modern world evolved from the RNA world is still mostly unknown. Now, in a new study published last week in the journal Nature, ...

Imagine packing all the people in the world into the Great Salt Lake in Utah — all of us jammed shoulder to shoulder, yet also charging past one another at insanely high speeds. That gives you some ...

Medicinal chemistry, also known as pharmaceutical chemistry, is a branch of chemistry focused on the development of new drugs and the improvement of existing ones. It is an interdisciplinary field ...

Allan Albig receives funding from the National Institute of Health. Think back to that basic biology class you took in high school. You probably learned about organelles, those little “organs” inside ...