Showing posts with the label
Origin of Life
Bacteria and Archaea are two of the three domains of life. Both must have evolved from the putative Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). One hypothesis is that this happened because the cell membra…
Ancient microbes may have been producing oxygen through photosynthesis a billion years earlier than we thought, which means oxygen was available for living organisms very close to the origin of life …
ETH scientists have been able to prove that a protein structure widespread in nature – the amyloid – is theoretically capable of multiplying itself. This makes it a potential predecessor to molecules…
In popular culture, asteroids play the role of apocalyptic threat, get blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs -- and offer an extraterrestrial source for mineral mining. Credit: Pixabay But for research…
Life as we know it originated roughly 3.5 to 4 billion years ago in the form of a prebiotic ("before life") soup of organic molecules that somehow began to replicate themselves and pass alo…
One of the big evolutionary questions in life is how and why single cell organisms organised themselves to live in a group, thereby forming multicellular life forms. The muliticellular algae, Tetraba…
Extremophiles -- hardy organisms living in places that would kill most life on Earth -- provide fascinating insights into evolution, metabolism and even possible extraterrestrial life. A new study pr…
Rutgers scientists have found the "Legos of life" -- four core chemical structures that can be stacked together to build the myriad proteins inside every organism -- after smashing and diss…
RNA was probably the first informational molecule. Now chemists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have demonstrated that alternation of wet and dry conditions could have sufficed t…
Two wayward space rocks, which separately crashed to Earth in 1998 after circulating in our solar system's asteroid belt for billions of years, share something else in common: the ingredients for…
Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a fascinating new theory for how life on Earth may have begun. Chemists find key chemical reactions that support life today could have…
Reservoirs of oxygen-rich iron between the Earth’s core and mantle could have played a major role in Earth’s history, including the breakup of supercontinents, drastic changes in Earth’s atmospheric …
A new study led by ANU has shed light on how the earliest forms of life evolved on Earth about four billion years ago. Underwater heat vents [Credit: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratio…
An experiment mimicking our early solar system reveals that the sugar ribose, the 'R' in 'RNA,' can arise in the icy grains of comets. The origin of life on Earth has been a ma…
