One of the major unanswered questions about the origin of life is how droplets of RNA floating around the primordial soup turned into the membrane-protected packets of life we call cells. A new paper ...

The emergence of life on Earth is a question that has captivated scientists, philosophers, and thinkers for centuries. Among the critical stages in the origins of life is the formation and evolution ...

We've been looking at nature the wrong way, argues Rowan Hooper. If we stop focusing on the individual, we get a whole new picture of how life on Earth – and elsewhere – may have begun ...

Scientists have long been fascinated with the origin of life on Earth, namely the transition from simple pre-biotic organic molecules to living cell systems. How did these chemical reactions come ...

Modern cells are complex chemical entities with cytoskeletons, finely regulated internal and external molecules, and genetic material that determines nearly every aspect of their functioning. This ...

Roughly 4 billion years ago, Earth was developing conditions suitable for life. Origin-of-life scientists often wonder if the type of chemistry found on the early Earth was similar to what life ...

New research shows that rainwater could have helped create a meshy wall around protocells 3.8 billion years ago, a critical step in the transition from tiny beads of RNA to every bacterium, plant, ...

A new paper from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Houston Chemical Engineering Department and Chicago Center for the Origins of Life suggests rainwater could have ...