A team from the University of Illinois has uncovered surprising evolutionary links between the genetic code and tiny protein fragments called dipeptides. By analyzing billions of dipeptide sequences ...

When a bone grows, our bodies’ proteins help provide the structure. When a muscle tears, proteins help rebuild it. When we fight an infection, transport oxygen in our blood or send messages to a cell, ...

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

The origin of life is one big chemical Catch-22. It always has been. To get life started, you need a genetic molecule—something like RNA or DNA. That’s needed to store information about how to ...

A forested hill and clouds are in the background of an image of a shallow pool of steaming water, with the ground underneath colored in shades of beige, red, and brown. Life may have first emerged in ...

Oceans churned with lava. Air filled thick with smoke. Asteroids stormed down incessantly. Life during the Hadean Eon four billion years ago was a struggle, and yet that was when it began. 1,2 With no ...

Nearly all known life builds proteins from the same alphabet of 20 canonical amino acids. Strung together in different orders, those building blocks form the proteins that make cells work. In a new ...