Scientists have long believed that a universal genetic code serves as a blueprint for all life on Earth, dictating the structure and function of organisms from the simplest bacteria to complex humans.

New scientific theory based on ancient proteins suggests that genes did not arise as we believed and that life could have started elsewhere.

DNA contains foundational information needed to sustain life. Understanding how this information is stored and organized has been one of the greatest scientific challenges of the last century. With ...

The traditional explanation of the initial genetic code in life seems less established when ancient proteins seem to be ...

In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick published the molecular structure of the biological hereditary material deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) whose famous double-helical structure is now imprinted in the ...

WTOP’s Matt Kaufax takes an even deeper dive into the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s “Ocean Library” through DNA collection.

A new theory that explains why the language of our genes is more complex than it needs to be also suggests that the primordial soup where life began on earth was hot and not cold, as many scientists ...

In this AI-generated illustration of Earth at the dawn of life, a distant volcano towers over shallow pools of water. It is possible the earliest life forms evolved in such environments. Credit: ...

"First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Profile Books Ltd"--Title-page verso. The story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code, the thing that ultimately enables a spiraling molecule ...