Researchers demonstrated how amino acids could spontaneously attach to RNA under early Earth-like conditions using thioesters, providing a long-sought clue to the origins of protein synthesis. This ...

Most hypotheses suggest that earlier forms of life had partial genetic codes and used fewer than 20 amino acids. To test these hypotheses, a team from Columbia and Harvard decided to see if they could ...

Something written in every biology textbook of the past 70 years may need a rewrite. Not because the science was careless, or ...

It's a dogma taught in every introductory biology class: Proteins are composed of combinations of 20 different amino acids, arranged into diverse sequences like words. But researchers trying to ...