One of the most elegant theories about the origins of life on our planet is that it was kick-started by a delivery from outer space. This idea suggests that prebiotic molecules—the building blocks of ...

Tryptophan, the essential amino acid behind the Thanksgiving myth that eating turkey can make you sleepy, has been found to exist on Bennu, a small asteroid that swings by our planet about every six ...

State Key Laboratory of Biopharmaceutical Preparation and Delivery, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China School of Chemical Engineering, University of ...

The researchers used mouse skin samples to monitor changes to the fat tissue under the skin, as well as to the hair follicles and the cells that help hair grow, after they caused small injuries to ...

In a peer-reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the single life form that branched into ...

Researchers demonstrated how amino acids could spontaneously attach to RNA under early Earth-like conditions using thioesters, providing a long-sought clue to the origins of protein synthesis. This ...

Amino acids are absolutely essential to our health—and for life itself. They are the so-called “building blocks” of proteins. They play a key role in the growth, repair, and maintenance of almost ...

Rolls of brightly colored plastic. After it is used and discarded, polylactic acid could be used as a feedstock for making the amino acid alanine. Credit: Shutterstock One of the simpler amino acids, ...

The tumor microenvironment is not just a site of cancer growth—it is a high-stakes metabolic contest where tumor and immune cells vie for limited resources. Amino acids, once seen as passive nutrients ...

Amino acid metabolism in the TIME. The TIME is shaped by metabolic competition between tumor and immune cells. Amino acids have key roles in modulating immune responses and tumor progression. (A) ...

They turned to the amino acid glutamine, because it is the most abundant amino acid in the blood. Glutamine is naturally synthesized in the body and can also be consumed from all animal protein ...