Cell-free systems designed to perform complex chemical conversions of biomass to biofuels or commodity chemicals are emerging as promising alternatives to the metabolic engineering of living cells.

Metabolic pathways may seem arbitrary and unnecessarily complex. In many cases, a chemist might devise a simpler route for the biochemical transformation, so why has nature chosen such complex ...

A molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the basic unit of biochemical energy that fuels the activities of all cells. Now a team led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Howard ...

Life evolved from simple geochemical processes present on the early Earth. However, the details of this transformation remain a mystery. In this study, researchers modeled the emergence of metabolic ...

A recent study demonstrates that a few "forgotten" biochemical reactions can transform simple geochemical compounds into complex molecules essential for life. The origin of life on Earth remains a ...