The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For a molecule of RNA, the world is a dangerous place. Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, ...

Thomas Gingeras did not intend to upend basic ideas about how the human body works. In 2012 the geneticist, now at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York State, was one of a few hundred colleagues ...

Life's instructions are written in DNA, but it is the enzyme RNA polymerase II (Pol II) that reads the script, transcribing ...

More of the ingredients for life have been found in meteorites. Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report ...

At the time of writing Kristie Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed the following ...

Scientists have extracted the oldest RNA molecules out of a woolly mammoth, gaining a snapshot into the processes at work in the extinct mammal's body just before it died.