Scientists may have found a clue to one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the origin of life: how fragile RNA molecules could gather and survive before cells existed. New research shows that RNA is ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In 1957, just four years after Francis Crick and other scientists solved the riddle of ...

CRISPR’s rise from obscure bacterial defense system to molecular scalpel has always hinged on one small component: the guide RNA. For years, that guide RNA—meticulously designed, modified, and ...

Scientists have identified a previously unrecognized layer of the human genome. It's built not from DNA's usual building blocks, but from small fragments of RNA embedded directly inside it. Georgia ...