The nanozymes hypothesis proposes that mineral nanoparticles drove chemical evolution on early Earth, helping transform inert matter into life through catalytic and environmental processes.

Biologists are closing in on a puzzle that seems to turn classic evolutionary logic inside out, yet may be so common that it deserves to be called a new rule of life. Instead of always purging harmful ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien ...

The number of known proteins is infinitely small in comparison to the universe of possible proteins, which could in theory be realized. Yet these known proteins are the only major training ground for ...

The questions of how humankind came to be, and whether we are alone in the universe, have captured imaginations for millennia. But to answer these questions, scientists must first understand life ...

Oxygen played a key role in the evolution of complex organisms, according to new research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that the complexity of life forms increased earlier ...

"Consciousness," although challenging to define, can be thought of as a first-person awareness of one's surroundings and oneself. You sense the world through your eyes, nose, ears and hands, and track ...

Introduction : how to write history of biology -- The place of biology in the sciences and its conceptual structure -- The changing intellectual milieu of biology Diversity of life. Macrotaxonomy, the ...

Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the University of Oxford have uncovered a clue that may help to explain why the earliest evidence of complex ...