New research shows that rainwater could have helped create a meshy wall around protocells 3.8 billion years ago, a critical step in the transition from tiny beads of RNA to every bacterium, plant, ...

One of the major unanswered questions about the origin of life is how droplets of RNA floating around the primordial soup turned into the membrane-protected packets of life we call cells. A new paper ...

Protocell compartments used as models for an important step in the early evolution of life on Earth can be made from short polymers. Protocell compartments used as models for an important step in the ...

Scientists have long been fascinated with the origin of life on Earth, namely the transition from simple pre-biotic organic molecules to living cell systems. How did these chemical reactions come ...

A new paper from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Houston Chemical Engineering Department and Chicago Center for the Origins of Life suggests rainwater could have ...