Potato spindle tuber disease wasn't a life-or-death situation, but it led to the discovery of viroids: infectious, replicating bits of RNA

It turns out life may have gotten its start pretty early in Earth's history, and while the first couple billion years saw several important developments, the period was still dominated by very simple life forms. This is our first...

Despite the incredible variations of life we see today, at the fundamental level, all living things contain three elements: Nucleic acids, Proteins, and lipids. These three things had to have been present in order for...