Mechanochemical peptide bond formation behind the origins of life

The presence of amino acids on the prebiotic Earth is widely accepted, either coming from endogenous chemical processes or being delivered by extraterrestrial material. On the other hand, plausibly prebiotic pathways to peptides ...

Early Earth's atmosphere was less conducive to lightning

In 1952, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey made sparks fly in a gas-filled flask meant to reflect the composition of Earth's atmosphere around 3.8 billion years ago. Their results suggested that lightning could have led to prebiotic ...

Enzymes allow DNA to swap information with exotic molecules

(Phys.org) —The discovery of the Rosetta Stone resolved a longstanding puzzle, permitting the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs into Ancient Greek. John Chaput, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute ...

Where did the first sugars come from?

Two prominent origin-of-life chemists have published a new hypothesis for how the first sugars—which were necessary for life to evolve—arose on the early Earth.

Stable majorities

How could prebiotic information-bearing DNA sequences survive in the face of competition from a vast excess of shorter molecules with random sequences? LMU scientists now show that a relatively simple mechanism could have ...

Halfway mark for NOEMA construction

The completion of NOEMA phase 1, the first phase of the NOEMA project will be officially celebrated this Wednesday, September 19th. IRAM and its partner institutes have completed the first, decisive step towards one of the ...

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