Synthetic biology moves into the realm of the unnatural

The field of synthetic biology has had great success engineering yeast and bacteria to make chemicals—biofuels, pharmaceuticals, fragrances, even the hoppy flavors of beer—cheaply and more sustainably, with only sugar ...

Japan's capsule with asteroid samples retrieved in Australia

A Japanese capsule carrying the world's first asteroid subsurface samples shot across the night atmosphere early Sunday before landing in the remote Australian Outback, completing a mission to provide clues to the origin ...

Mars rover sees hints of past life in latest rock samples

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has detected its highest concentrations yet of organic molecules, in a potential signal of ancient microbes that scientists are eager to confirm when the rock samples are eventually brought ...

Best image yet of atoms moving in real time produced (w/ video)

Call it the ultimate nature documentary. Scientists at the University of Toronto have recorded atomic motions in real time, offering a glimpse into the very essence of chemistry and biology at the atomic level. Their recording ...

Identifying organic compounds with visible light

Researchers from the Universidad de Santiago de Chile and the University of Notre Dame, working with machine learning, have devised a method to identify organic compounds based on the refractive index at a single optical ...

The habitability of Titan and its ocean

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a hotbed of organic molecules, harboring a soup of complex hydrocarbons similar to that thought to have existed over four billion years ago on the primordial Earth. Titan's surface, however, ...

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