Two separate laboratory breakthroughs have produced RNA molecules that can build copies of themselves or assemble functional structures without any help from proteins or DNA. These results offer the ...

A 45-nucleotide strand of RNA can now synthesize both its mirror-image complement and a copy of itself, bringing scientists ...

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an RNA molecule that can not just replicate, but “evolve” into a diverse range of more complex molecules. This find could plug a major gap in the ...

Scientists discover QT45, a self-replicating RNA molecule, offering insights into the origins of life on Earth.

Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this ...

Chemists at UCL and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth – a key process in the origin of life. Scientists ...

RNA is thought to have sparked the origin of life by self-copying. Researchers have now revealed the atomic structure of an 'RNA copy machine' through cryo-EM. This breakthrough sheds light on a ...

There are plenty of unanswered questions about the origin of life on Earth. But the research community has largely reached consensus that one of the key steps was the emergence of an RNA molecule that ...

This article is part of a series on viroids. The first, which can be read here, gave an overview of what viroids are and how they replicate. The second article described the plant host range of ...

This story is part of a larger series on viroids and virusoids, small infectious RNAs. It is also the sixth installment in a series on hepatitis D virus, a virusoid-like pathogen that causes serious ...