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

Cold cosmic dust grains can link amino acids into protein‑like chains in deep space, suggesting life’s chemistry may begin ...

New experiments reveal that protein precursors can form naturally in deep space under extreme cold and radiation. Scientists found that simple amino acids bond into peptides on interstellar dust, long ...

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.

"We used to think that only very simple molecules could be created in these clouds. But we have shown that this is clearly ...

Using quantum chemical methods, a team of researchers led by Dr. Matthias Granold and Professor Bernd Moosmann of the Institute of Pathobiochemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz solved one ...

All biological amino acids on Earth appear exclusively in their left-handed form, but the reason underlying this observation is elusive. Recently, scientists uncovered new clues about the cosmic ...

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 ...