More than four billion years ago, Earth was a very different place. Pools of water froze and thawed in cycles, minerals shaped reactions, and molecules bumped into each other by chance.

For decades, the central dogma of molecular biology—DNA makes RNA, RNA makes protein, protein makes phenotype—was the guiding framework for understanding inheritance and disease. This model explained ...

New study reveals how aminoacyl-thiols may have kickstarted protein synthesis, shedding light on life's origins.

Every living cell transcribes DNA into RNA. This process begins when an enzyme called RNA polymerase (RNAP) clamps onto DNA. Within a few hundred milliseconds, the DNA double helix unwinds to form a ...

Researchers have made a significant advance in understanding how genes are controlled in living organisms. The new study focuses on critical snippets of RNA in the tiny, transparent roundworm ...

The metaphors we used to describe DNA make it sound almost sacred. Proteins, too, are revered. They are the “workhorses of the cell.” They make things happen. RNA, by contrast, has not been so exalted ...

Despite being made from a relatively simple set of building blocks, ribonucleic acid (RNA) has a broad array of complex ...

Spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, is the leading genetic cause of infant death. Less than a decade ago, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Adrian Krainer showed this brutal disease can be ...

Look inside a brain cell with Huntington’s disease or ALS and you are likely to find RNA clumped together. These solid-like clusters, thought to be irreversible, can act as sponges that soak up ...