Marlene Belfort does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

According to the RNA world hypothesis, life began when RNA molecules evolved the ability to make more copies of themselves. Now we have discovered an RNA molecule that is almost capable of this – it ...

There are plenty of unanswered questions about the origin of life on Earth. But the research community has largely reached consensus that one of the key steps was the emergence of an RNA molecule that ...

One of the greatest mysteries of our planet is how a soup of lifeless chemicals transformed into the first living cell. There are several competing theories about where this happened, from frozen ...