Urey and Miller recognized that the overall chemical processes that take place on the surface of the Earth involved three general components: energy, the atmosphere, and the oceans.

Titan’s atmosphere hosts a complex organic chemistry in the solar system starting with nitrogen and methane and leading to the formation of hydrocarbons and nitriles, including prebiotic molecules.

The concept of an RNA world is a hypothesis firmly rooted in empirical data and is part of a long and complex scientific perspective that goes back more than fifty years to the discovery of the central role RNA.

Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are carbon-containing fragments of primitive asteroids that have offered the only samples available to date giving insights into chemical evolution in laboratory analyses. Their study has revealed that abundant organic chemistry came to be in the Solar System ahead of terrestrial life and, by the input of these meteorites and comets, might have aided in the origin of our planet’s biochemistry.

The question of the origin of life cannot be explained by appealing exclusively to Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms, as many experts tend to assume, but requires a profound change in perspective.

The cenancestor is defined as the last common ancestor of every currently living being. Its nature has been inferred from the identification of homologous genes between archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotic lineages. These inferences indicate that the cenancestor had a relatively modern protein translation system, similar in complexity to that of a current cell. However, the key enzymes for the replication of genetic material and for cell membrane biosynthesis are not homologous in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. Here, we briefly review the history of the concept of the last universal common ancestor and the different hypotheses proposed for its biology.

«The question of the origin of life is one of the fundamental problems of science.» Few would disagree with this statement by the Russian biochemist Alexander I. Oparin, pioneer in

The expected effects of global environmental change over the coming decades may worsen the situation for many currently endangered Valencian plants, even leading to the localised extinction of some species

Author disclaimer: this article contains a considerable amount of spoilers   THE SERIES PHENOMENOn The twenty-first century brings an unprecedented narrative and visual phenomenon with millions of viewers all around the world: TV

The disappearance of Oliver Sacks on 30 August 2015 marked the end of an era. His final farewell represented the loss of a great figure, an immensely influential voice truncated.

In the long-lived human culture there have been a handful of especially transcendent ideas. They are ideas that divide history into two parts. Most of these few big ideas have

Light can be considered from many points of view. Light is essential for the development of life on Earth, has determined animal and plant evolution, and has also a role in many aspects of culture and art.

Manipulating the intestinal microbiota could be beneficial for our health. Yogurt would do so, although evidence on the health effects of consuming these types of microorganisms is very limited.

I worked for fours years at TVE programme Redes. It was an excellent programme and Punset was a great science communicator who managed to do what very few could: get

Imagine a solar panel that can transform almost one hundred percent of the sunlight it receives into electricity. To make the most out of nights, place

«Natural selection

Rivalry and the exceptional nature of war lay the ground for a boost in techno-science as an instrument to overpower the adversary.

Religion is usually a rational attempt to explain the incomprehensible. A rational one, based on available information, naturally. Of course, most religions are very old, so their rationalist effort seems

Despite the phenomenal progress molecular biology has made, we remain without an adequate account of the organization of proteins into an organism.

The tragedy of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa was exacerbated by World Health Organization (WHO) rhetoric that depicted medical personnel as saviors of an irrational and emotional public.

We can support the idea that creativity in social and human sciences benefits more from preserving a plurality of scientific production spaces than from a single homogeneous space, which usually tends to fall into complacency.

This article examines the figure of the scientist in such fictional narratives and what these characterizations indicate about public attitudes toward science in our contemporary world.