The tiny pantheon known as the Asgard archaea bear traits that hint at how plants, animals and fungi emerged on Earth.

How can animate life be formed from inanimate matter? It’s one of the most fascinating enigmas in science because, without this crucial first step, called abiogenesis, there would be no life on Earth.

The results indicate that the elements essential for life formed within extreme, highly energetic environments deep inside stars, far removed from the calm conditions required for life itself. The ...

Life may have emerged from a surprisingly simple network of chemical reactions long before cells or genes existed.

Scientists provide fresh insights on the origins of life, presenting compelling evidence supporting the 'RNA World' hypothesis. The study unveils an RNA enzyme that can make accurate copies of other ...

A new study shines a spotlight on sulfur, a chemical element that, while all familiar, has proved surprisingly resistant to scientific efforts in probing its role in the origin of life. Many artists ...

To celebrate the groundbreaking research of 2025 Drake Award recipients Dr. David Deamer and Dr. John Baross, the SETI Institute commissioned bioartist Dr. Jennifer Willet to create a unique artwork ...

Half a century ago, a quiet theorist working far from the big Western labs proposed a radical answer to one of science’s ...

In a new book, astrophysicist Mario Livio describes how the existence of life on Earth can be traced back to an RNA-based “protocell.” The following is an excerpt from Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest ...

Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to bridge rifts in this fractured research field. The ...

In an important new paper forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, Robert Shapiro (New York University) argues against the widely held theory that the origin of life began ...