Two separate laboratory breakthroughs have produced RNA molecules that can build copies of themselves or assemble functional structures without any help from proteins or DNA. These results offer the ...

These random molecules were fed a collection of three-base-long RNAs, each linked to a chemical tag. The idea was that if a molecule is capable of ligating one of these short RNA fragments to itself, ...

Although there are striking differences between the cells that make up your eyes, kidneys, brain and toes, the DNA blueprint ...

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

In his new book, “The Catalyst,” Dr. Thomas Cech describes how mRNA in the COVID vaccines encodes the virus’s spike protein. The following is an excerpt from The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock ...

Life on Earth may have started with a molecule that still runs our cells today. As researchers probe ribonucleic acid in the lab and in ancient rocks and space dust, RNA is yielding clues that are far ...

Cells contain a blueprint in the form of DNA that dictates what they can make. This blueprint is converted into a message, or mRNA, which is then converted into protein. Although DNA remains the same ...

Chemists at UCL have shown how two of biology’s most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of life four billion years ...

A forested hill and clouds are in the background of an image of a shallow pool of steaming water, with the ground underneath colored in shades of beige, red, and brown. Life may have first emerged in ...

Researchers have developed RNA therapeutics, called micelles, that can delivery chemotherapeutic drugs to metastasized tumors in mouse models.