Two separate laboratory breakthroughs have produced RNA molecules that can build copies of themselves or assemble functional structures without any help from proteins or DNA. These results offer the ...

Researchers are embarking on the RNA equivalent of the Human Genome Project, including sequencing all the chemical ...

In 2018, the RNA Society endorsed Aug. 1 as annual World RNA Day, and depending on when you’re reading this article, the anniversary of that day is either upon you now or has likely passed you by ...

Ask a friend what DNA is and, chances are, they have a general idea. Seventy years after scientists discovered the two-stranded helix, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is widely understood as the keeper of ...

Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this ...

How does a cell know when it’s been damaged? A molecular alarm, set off by mutated RNA and colliding ribosomes, signals danger. When the sun shines on your skin, what does it hit? When it causes a ...

Sean Ryder, professor at UMass Chan Medical School, has written a book to delve the mysteries of ribonucleic acid as a tool to fight diseases. Messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA, is in the public ...

Thomas Gingeras did not intend to upend basic ideas about how the human body works. In 2012 the geneticist, now at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York State, was one of a few hundred colleagues ...

Scientists are consistently one-upping each other when it comes to finding the oldest molecules from fossils. The race even includes the notoriously fragile RNA. “It’s groundbreaking,” said Oliver ...

The natural RNAi mechanism can be directed by either short interfering RNA (siRNA) or microRNA (miRNA). 1 There are four key steps in the RNAi pathway. When miRNA acts as the guide for RNAi, only a ...