This diagram depicts the chemical structure of pyrimidine, a six-membered aromatic ring with two nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 (highlighted in blue). The remaining positions are occupied by ...

One of the greatest mysteries of our planet is how a soup of lifeless chemicals transformed into the first living cell. There are several competing theories about where this happened, from frozen ...

Comparison of a single-stranded RNA and a double-stranded DNA with their corresponding nucleobases. (Image: Wikimedia Commons, CC SA 3.0) The most common type of base pairing is the Watson-Crick base ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of DNA’s structure—the now famous double helix ...

Scientists on their quest to find the origin of life have stared into the primordial soup, trying to answer the ultimate chicken-and-egg question: Which came first, the genetic code or the proteins ...

RNA’s Surprising Role in DNA Repair New insights could lead to improved treatments for cancer and other diseases. Francesca Storici and her research team discovered a surprising role for RNA in DNA ...

Your DNA is continually damaged by sources both inside and outside your body. One especially severe form of damage called a double-strand break involves the severing of both strands of the DNA double ...

The discovery of catalytic RNA transformed our understanding of life's beginnings. Clare Sansom explores how the RNA world ...

Our genes contain all the instructions our body needs to function, but their expression must be finely regulated to guarantee that each cell performs its role optimally. This is where DNA and RNA ...