New research shows how RNA, a key molecule for life, may have formed on early Earth using simple chemistry and materials delivered by asteroid impacts, linking space science with the origins of life ...

More than four billion years ago, Earth was a very different place. Pools of water froze and thawed in cycles, minerals shaped reactions, and molecules bumped into each other by chance. Out of this ...

Comparison of a single-stranded RNA and a double-stranded DNA with their corresponding nucleobases. (Image: Wikimedia Commons, CC SA 3.0) The most common type of base pairing is the Watson-Crick base ...

Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted. From E=mc² to splitting the atom ...

Ask a friend what DNA is and, chances are, they have a general idea. Seventy years after scientists discovered the two-stranded helix, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is widely understood as the keeper of ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...

Chemist Anne Lüscher showed at 39C3 how synthetic DNA can be used for data storage and tamper-proof authentication.

It has been claimed that because most of our DNA is active, it must be important, but now human-plant hybrid cells have been ...