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 ...

Researchers at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Karolinska Institutet have captured the first detailed molecular snapshots of human polynucleotide phosphorylase (hPNPase) in action, ...

Nicholas Dreisbach (left) is a Senior Associate Scientist in the RNA team at ElevateBio (MA, USA), where he deploys his skills as an expert in capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE) technologies. His ...

Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted. From E=mc² to splitting the atom ...

Scientists have sequenced RNA from a nearly 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth leg, the oldest ancient RNA ever recovered. These ...

Long known as a messenger within cells, RNA is increasingly seen as life’s molecular communication system — even between organisms widely separated by evolution. For a molecule of RNA, the world is a ...

A new role has been uncovered for a cell's own RNA in fending off attacks by RNA viruses. Some of the cell's RNA molecules, researchers found, help regulate antiviral signaling. These signals are part ...

Some 39,000 years ago, a woolly mammoth died in present-day Siberia, destined to be blanketed by ice and permafrost that would end up preserving its body — even down to the hair and muscle. Now, that ...

Many writers grouse when an editor makes a change in a story, but the consequences of changing a single word usually aren’t that dire. Not so with genetic instructions for making proteins. Even a ...

The recovery of ancient RNA from a woolly mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost has offered scientists a rare look into the workings of an animal that lived nearly forty thousand years ago. RNA ...