Scripps scientists show that ribose may have been nature’s preferred sugar for building RNA, offering new insight into how life’s molecular foundations may have formed before biology began. Today, ...

In living organisms today, complex molecules like RNA and DNA are constructed with the help of enzymes. So how did these molecules form before life (and enzymes) existed? Why did some molecules end up ...

UChicago researchers have developed a new blood test that uses RNA modifications to detect early-stage colorectal cancer with ...

What made ribose the sugar of choice for life's code? Scientists at Scripps Research may have cracked a major part of this mystery. Their experiments show that ribose binds more readily and ...

Banerjee is also exploring RNA’s role in the origin of life, thanks to a seed grant from the Hypothesis Fund. He is studying whether biomolecular condensates may have protected RNA’s functions as ...

But sometimes those two ends join and form “circular RNA”: the same molecule, but it lasts much, much longer.

Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, double-stranded form, RNA isn’t built to last—not even within the cell that made it.

From the small shapes that RNA can form – hoops, triangles and so forth – larger, more elaborate structures can in turn be constructed, such as rods gathered into spindly, many-pronged bundles.