While humans have an esthetic liking for symmetry in everything, nature prefers asymmetric, single-handed forms when it comes to amino acids—the building blocks of proteins, and, by extension, all ...

The complex building blocks of life can form spontaneously in space, a new lab experiment shows.

Amino acids are molecules fundamental to living organisms because they combine to build proteins, the workhorses of the cell. One metabolic pathway that produces amino acids involves transamination, a ...

Four billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than it does today, devoid of life and covered by a vast ocean. Over the course of millions of years, in that primordial soup, life emerged.

Exactly how life sprung out of non-living matter is one of biology's biggest mysteries. But with continued research into our own origin story, it's starting to seem like life on early Earth was just ...

Biochemists shed light on the evolution of our 20- amino acid toolbox. The genetic code of life depends mainly on 20 amino acids, which can be arranged in various combinations to form proteins. For ...