Origins of life

The polymath Christoph Adami is investigating life’s origins by reimagining life as self-perpetuating information strings.

Did the minerals on our planet arise in a predictable fashion, or did they result from chance events? The answers could eventually help scientists identify planets likely to harbor life.

Scientists hope that new genetic letters, created in the lab, will endow DNA with new powers.

Life’s first epoch saw incredible advances — cells, metabolism and DNA, to name a few. Researchers are resurrecting ancient proteins to illuminate the biological dark ages.

All life on Earth is made of molecules that twist in the same direction. New research reveals that this may not always have been so.

Newly discovered specimens support a more ancient origin for viruses, perhaps all the way back to the origins of life.

Evidence from Southwestern deserts suggests that oxygen-breathing organisms arose on land rather than in the seas.

Scientists have discovered building blocks similar to those in modern RNA that can effortlessly assemble when mixed in water and heated.

An MIT physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire lifelike physical properties.