amino acids

A new study of transfer RNA, a molecule that delivers amino acids to the protein-building machinery of the cell, challenges long-held ideas about the evolutionary history of protein synthesis.

(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) A new study of transfer RNA, a molecule that delivers amino acids to the protein-building machinery of the cell, challenges long-held ideas about the evolutionary history of protein synthesis.

Free radical pollution in the air could be a cause of asthma. Chemists have discovered that the atmospheric nitrate radical irreversibly damages amino acids, which are the building blocks for proteins in the human body.

This, they suggest, could be a cause of some respiratory diseases.

Biochemists have discovered a new pathway by which the cell selectively degrades ribosomes. The pathway is called ribophagy and will probably mean new revisions for the textbooks.

Ubiquitin makes it all possible. Ribosomes are the cell's translation engines. They use genetic information to build chains of amino-acids that afterwards fold to form proteins.

Desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life: The dominance of "left-handed" amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.

Our amino acid signature may well have come from outer space.

Researchers have detected for the first time a molecule closely related to an amino acid: amino acetonitrile. A lot of attention is given to the quest for so-called "bio"-molecules, especially interstellar amino acids.

Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and therefore key ingredients for the origin of life, have been found in meteorites on Earth, but not yet in interstellar space.

The thousands of proteins found in nature are simply strings of amino acids, assembled by genes, and scientists have long believed that they automatically fold themselves into uniquely fixed, 3-dimensional shapes to fire the engine of life.

In the era of genetic research, identifying those shapes and their functions has become a worldwide focus of biomedical science.

The thousands of proteins found in nature are simply strings of amino acids, assembled by genes, and scientists have long believed that they automatically fold themselves into uniquely fixed, 3-dimensional shapes to fire the engine of life.

In the era of genetic research, identifying those shapes and their functions has become a worldwide focus of biomedical science.

The organic soup that spawned life on Earth may have gotten generous helpings from outer space, according to a new study.

Scientists have discovered concentrations of amino acids in two meteorites that are more than 10 times higher than levels previously measured in other similar meteorites.

This result suggests that the early solar system was far richer in the organic building blocks of life than scientists had thought, and that fallout from space may have spiked Earth's primordial broth.

An important discovery has been made with respect to the mystery of "handedness" in biomolecules. Researchers have found that some of the possible abiotic precursors to the origin of life on Earth have been shown to carry "handedness" in a larger number than previously thought.

Scientists have long known that most compounds in living things exist in mirror-image forms. The two forms are like hands; one is a mirror reflection of the other.

They are different, cannot be superimposed, yet identical in their parts.