A strand of RNA just 45 nucleotides long has been discovered to perform two key reactions required for self-replication. The molecule, which is a kind of RNA enzyme, offers a tantalising clue towards ...

A DNA nano-harvester stays on its track inside tumor cells, measuring cancer aggressiveness by detecting a key microRNA ...

But genetic analyses over the past two decades have revealed traces of several human ghost lineages in the ancestry of people today and in the ancient DNA recovered from fossils. These human ghost ...

Researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge have discovered a ribozyme that is shockingly small, yet ...

Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this ...

DNA, the blueprint of life, is best known for its fundamental role as genetic material—storing and transmitting biological information through the precise sequence of its bases. For decades, this ...

Since the dawn of the computer age, researchers have wrestled with two persistent challenges: how to store ever-increasing ...

Life on Earth may have started with a molecule that still runs our cells today. As researchers probe ribonucleic acid in the ...

Life runs on instructions you never see. Every cell reads DNA, turns that message into RNA, and then builds proteins that ...

Winter weather can upend even the best-laid travel plans, but one less thing to worry about is losing money if your flight is canceled: U.S. airlines are required to provide refunds. A monster storm ...