Astrobiology

Distinguishing Biotic vs. Abiotic Origins of ‘Bio’signatures: Clues from Messy Prebiotic Chemistry for Detection of Life in the Universe
Bapat et al. – Life

Mantle mineralogy limits to rocky planet water inventories
Guimond et al. – Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Terminator Habitability: The Case for Limited Water Availability on M-dwarf Planets
Lobo et al. – The Astrophysical Journal

Molecular fingerprints resolve affinities of Rhynie chert organic fossils
Loron et al. – Nature Communications

A Biotic Habitable Zone: Impacts of Adaptation in Biotic Temperature Regulation
Nicholson et al. – preprint

Insights into the formation and evolution of extraterrestrial amino acids from the asteroid Ryugu
Potiszil et al. – Nature Communications

Biochemistry

Mechanism of Chiral-Selective Aminoacylation of an RNA Minihelix Explored by QM/MM Free-Energy Simulations
Ando et al. – Life

Protection of catalytic cofactors by polypeptides as a driver for the emergence of primordial enzymes
Gutierrez-Rus et al. – preprint

A mineral-based origin of Earth’s initial hydrogen peroxide and molecular oxygen
He et al. – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Ribozyme-mediated RNA synthesis and replication in a model Hadean microenvironment
Salditt et al. – Nature Communications

A prebiotic genetic alphabet as an early Darwinian ancestor for pre-RNA evolution
Sawant et al. – preprint

Alkaline vents recreated in two dimensions to study pH gradients, precipitation morphology and molecule accumulation
Weingart et al. – preprint

Bioinformatics

Avoidance of error catastrophe via proofreading innate to template-directed polymerization
Matsubara et al. – Physical Review Research

Earth sciences

Degassing of early-formed planetesimals restricted water delivery to Earth
Newcombe et al. – Nature

Geophysics

Surface changes observed on a Venusian volcano during the Magellan mission
Herrick et al. – Science

Mathematical biology

Formal autopoiesis: Solutions of the classical and extended functional closure equations
Chastain – Biosystems

Information–energy equivalence and the emergence of self-replicating biological systems
Paradis – Biosystems

Molecular biology

Division of labor promotes the entrenchment of multicellularity
Conlin et al. – preprint

The RNA-DNA world and the emergence of DNA-encoded heritable traits
Roy et al. – preprint

Planetary science

Active volcano on Venus shows it’s a living planet
Voosen – preprint