The chemical origin of life on Earth is a puzzle that scientists have been trying to piece together for decades. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain how life came to be and what chemical and ...

Designing plastics that can be broken down easily after their use phase have often required a trade-off between stability and ...

Scientists have been investigating properties of so-called xenonucleic acids or XNAs. They have demonstrated for the first time that six of these unnatural nucleic acid polymers are capable of sharing ...

Introducing therapeutic nucleic acids into cells is a way to potentially fix the genetic causes of diseases such as Down’s syndrome and cystic fibrosis. Scientists have designed synthetic materials to ...

This study, published in the journal Nature Chemistry, demonstrates for the first time a method of creating entire non-nucleic acid polymers directly from the code on DNA. Previously, non-nucleic acid ...

DNA. The very acronym calls to mind the molecule’s exquisite structure, a linear double helix. Our understanding of DNA and its orbiting strands has thrown back the curtains on many diseases—cancer, ...

The only chemical difference between DNA and a synthetic cousin, GNA, is in the sugar molecule. GNA uses a three-carbon sugar called glycerol rather than the five-carbon deoxyribose used in DNA. The ...

Nucleic acids are complex biological molecules that store and transmit genetic information in all living organisms. They are essential for the survival and reproduction of life on Earth. The two main ...

If you’ve ever learned a language, says Jen Heemstra of Emory University, there are two levels of understanding. First you learn to read text and comprehend it. Then you begin speaking the language ...