In a peer-reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the single life form that branched into ...

The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and complex as we peer into the mysterious world of viruses.

Half a century ago, a quiet theorist working far from the big Western labs proposed a radical answer to one of science’s hardest questions: what, exactly, makes something alive. His framework for how ...

In many submerged regions, murky mud shelters strange life-forms that seem to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of life on Earth. These creatures belong to a domain of life called the archaea ...