Hungarian biologist Tibor Gánti is an obscure figure. Now, more than a decade after his death, his ideas about how life began ...

Our planet is unique for its ability to sustain abundant life. From studies of the rock record, scientists believe life had already emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably much ...

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.

Modern cells are complex chemical entities with cytoskeletons, finely regulated internal and external molecules, and genetic ...

Scientists have made a bold leap in the search for life’s origins, offering a fresh look at how chemistry might have crossed over into biology. At the center of this progress are coacervate ...

Few questions have captivated humankind more than the origin of life on Earth. How did the first living cells come to exist? How did these early protocells develop the structural membranes necessary ...

In a new peer reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor is the single life form that branched into ...

Who were our earliest ancestors? The answer could lie in a special group of single-celled organisms with a cytoskeleton similar to that of complex organisms, such as animals and plants. Ten years ago, ...

Billions of years of evolution have made modern cells incredibly complex. Inside cells are small compartments called organelles that perform specific functions essential for the cell’s survival and ...

In many submerged regions, murky mud shelters strange life-forms that seem to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of life on Earth. These creatures belong to a domain of life called the archaea ...