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Life from scratch

Relaunching biology from the beginning

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A short stroll from Boston’s Charles River, behind a sheath of blue glass on the seventh floor of a Harvard Medical School research building, Jack Szostak is getting set to replay the greatest event on Earth.

LIFE FROM SCRATCH By creating vesicles containing proto-genetic material (depicted in this computer graphic), researchers are trying to watch life pop into existence. ~~ Janet Iwasa

BEFORE THE CELL | By simplifying a cell to only its necessary parts - a fatty acid envelope and RNA-like strands - some scientists are exploring how protocells could have formed from scratch on the early Earth, and then evolved into something more complex. ~~ Nicolle Rager Fuller

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