Neurons have a "hibernation mode." Scientists discover how brain cells use RNA tentacles to lock their protein factories together to survive when energy is low.

Ribonucleic acid, also called RNA, is a molecule present in all living cells. It plays a critical role in transmitting genetic instructions from DNA and creating proteins. With the power to execute a ...

Chemists at University College London have shown how two of biology's most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...