Scientists in the 1960s, including Salk Fellow Leslie Orgel, proposed that life began with the "RNA World," a hypothetical era in which small, stringy RNA molecules ruled the early Earth and ...

Now, in an important advance supporting this RNA World theory, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., have carried out a small but essential part of the story.

The involvement of noncoding mRNAs in many regulatory processes, their abundance, and their diversity of functions has led to the hypothesis that an "RNA world" may have preceded the evolution of ...

Researchers have now uncovered the 3D structure of the RNA enzyme SAMURI. Their study provides insights into the development of ribozymes and the evolution of catalytically active RNA. Researchers ...