Small enzyme-mimicking polymers may have helped start life

Most effort in origins of life research is focused on understanding the prebiotic formation of biological building blocks. However, it is possible early biological evolution relied on different chemical structures and processes, ...

Women with Neandertal gene give birth to more children

One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals—a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. This is according ...

Surfing on quantum waves: Protein folding revisited

Two physicists from the University of Luxembourg have now unambiguously shown that quantum-mechanical wavelike interactions are indeed crucial even at the scale of natural biological processes.

New study identifies possible ancestors of RNA

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology may have made headway in helping determine the origin of life by identifying three different molecules that self-assemble to form a molecular structure with features characteristic ...

Shouldering the burden of evolution

As early humans increasingly left forests and utilized tools, they took an evolutionary step away from apes. But what this last common ancestor with apes looked like has remained unclear. A new study led by researchers at ...

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