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.

Gamma radiation can convert methane into a wide variety of products at room temperature, including hydrocarbons, oxygen-containing molecules, and amino acids, reports a research team. This type of ...

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 ...

Amino acids are the fundamental building blocks of proteins and play central roles as intermediates in myriad metabolic pathways. In medical biochemistry, they are not only recognised for their ...

There are key moments in Earth's history that remain shrouded in mystery. The emergence of the first molecules capable of working together to give rise to life is one of them. For several ...

This research was supported by the University of Bristol Bob Savage Memorial Fund and the Leverhulme Trust (PLP-2012-116). As a scientist, lab work can sometimes get monotonous. But in 2017, while a ...

Life on Earth is complex and varied, but every living organism on the planet builds its proteins from the same set of 20 amino acids. All proteins in a human body, for example, are made up of some ...

The energy for various functions of the human body comes from the nutrient molecules that have been broken down, in a process called metabolism. Metabolism comprises of two major parts: anabolism ...

An amino acid has been produced in a lab by warming analogs of ices found in the freezing conditions of interstellar gas clouds. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

The Winchcombe meteorite, which crashed onto a driveway in England in 2021 and is pristine enough to rival asteroid samples taken directly from space, contains amino acids that potentially led to the ...

Amino acids are absolutely essential to our health—and for life itself. They are the so-called “building blocks” of proteins. They play a key role in the growth, repair, and maintenance of almost ...