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 ...

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 ...

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

Multiple forms of double-stranded RNA (blue, magenta, orange structures) cross cell membranes with the help of a conserved protein located in novel sites (colored by depth) throughout the roundworm's ...

RNA-based medicines are one of the most promising ways to fight human disease, as demonstrated by the recent successes of RNA vaccines and double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) therapies. But while health care ...

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

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 ...

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 ...