Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted. From E=mc² to splitting the atom ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...

Researchers analyzed which molecules can pass through membranes to learn why all life today uses building blocks with a certain “handedness” How life arose remains a looming question in science that ...

Salk scientists engineered a right-handed RNA enzyme (bottom left) that can combine left-handed RNA fragments (bottom right) to create a mirror image of itself. The new left-handed RNA enzyme (top ...

However, the link between the chirality of molecules and cellular chirality is largely unknown. Many molecules in cells are chiral, including DNA and some amino acids and proteins, but it's not clear ...

Francesca Storici consults at Tessera Therapeutics. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Your DNA is continually damaged by sources both ...

For the first time, scientists at ETH Zurich have utilized extremely brief, rotating bursts of light to analyze and modify electron movements in mirror-image molecules. They demonstrated that the ...

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have emerged as a pivotal tool in elucidating the intricate behaviours of nucleic acids at the atomic scale. These computational methods offer a dynamic portrayal ...

Figure 1: Microscopy image showing the concentric pattern of F-actin, which gives rise to the clockwise rotation of the nucleus cytoplasm (the colors indicate the ...