New kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, have been detected in the plumes bursting from Saturn's moon Enceladus. The findings are the result of the ongoing deep dive into data from NASA's Cassini mission.
Astronomy
Oct 2, 2019
6
1147
MIT chemists have devised a way to rapidly synthesize and screen millions of novel proteins that could be used as drugs against Ebola and other viruses.
Biochemistry
May 21, 2018
2
1353
How did life come about? The answer to this question goes to the very heart of our existence on planet Earth.
Astrobiology
Mar 25, 2023
0
48
A famous experiment in 1953 showed that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could have formed spontaneously under the atmospheric conditions of early Earth. However, just because molecules could form doesn't mean ...
Biochemistry
Aug 7, 2019
1
903
While most humans are right-handed, our proteins are made up of lefty molecules. In the same way your left and right hands mirror one another, molecules can assemble in two reflected structures. Life prefers the left-handed ...
Materials Science
Jul 21, 2015
10
297
Comet impact on Earth are synonymous with great extinctions, but now research presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Prague shows that early comet impact would have become a driving force to cause substantial ...
Space Exploration
Aug 18, 2015
22
572
The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unraveling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the ...
Astrobiology
Apr 21, 2024
1
1938
An international and interdisciplinary team working at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has modeled the evolution of one of biology's most fundamental sets of building blocks and ...
Evolution
Sep 10, 2019
1
930
New chemistry, new enzymology. With a new method that merges the best of two worlds—the unique and complementary activities of enzymes and small-molecule photochemistry—researchers at UC Santa Barbara have opened the ...
Materials Science
Jul 29, 2023
0
793
From its humble origin(s), life has infected the entire planet with endless beautiful forms. The genesis of life is the oldest biological event, so old that no clear evidence was left behind other than the existence of life ...
Evolution
May 19, 2023
5
131
