New Way To Think About Earth's First Cells
Thursday, June 5, 2008 - 20:21
in Biology & Nature
A team of researchers have modeled in the laboratory a primitive cell, or protocell, that is capable of building, copying and containing DNA. Since there are no physical records of what the first primitive cells on Earth looked like, or how they grew and divided, the research team's protocell project offers a useful way to learn about how Earth's earliest cells may have interacted with their environment approximately 3.5 billion years ago.