Three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins—the building blocks of life—were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday. Their work used advanced ...

Ultimately, the gel-first hypothesis does not claim to provide a definitive answer to the origin of life. Rather, it offers a conceptual framework—one that integrates soft-matter physics, systems ...

New scientific theory based on ancient proteins suggests that genes did not arise as we believed and that life could have started elsewhere.

Metabolism is the "beating heart of the cell". New research from ELSI retraces the history of metabolism from the primordial Earth to the modern day (left to right). The history of compound discovery ...

Several studies in recent years have found amino acids, some of the molecules that make up cell membranes, and other key pieces of the chemistry of life floating on grains of interstellar dust. But a ...

Stanley L. Miller, an emeritus professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego whose famous laboratory experiments in 1952 demonstrated how the simple organic ...

A new study explores how complex chemical mixtures change under shifting environmental conditions, shedding light on the prebiotic processes that may have led to life. By exposing organic molecules to ...

The study of the origin of life and prebiotic chemistry seeks to elucidate how inanimate chemical systems transitioned into self‐sustaining, evolving entities. Research in this field integrates ...