In addition to our annual dedications to topics of cancer and neuroscience, this year The Scientist focused four issues on areas of life-science research that were ripe for broad and in-depth review. In March, we covered The Origin of Life, focused on an ever-mysterious time in which the planet birthed living organisms from nonliving entities. In back-to-back issues over the summer, we published The Food Issue followed by a book focused almost entirely on the act of Sex. And in October, we published the fourth issue in our annual series on the senses: Making Sense of Sight. (We will complete the five basic senses in 2015, with an issue dedicated to hearing.)
Here’s a look back at The Scientist’s 2014 special issues:
The Origin of Life (March)
Sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, something changed on Earth, giving rise to the planet’s first life. How this happened remains a mystery, and is a continued topic of scientific debate and research. One popular idea what that rudimentary RNA, the nucleic acid that today serves as an intermediate between our genes and our proteins, began to self-replicate and evolve. But as evolutionary biochemist Niles Lehman of Portland State University in Oregon puts it: “The odds of suddenly having a self-replicating RNA pop out of a prebiotic soup are vanishingly low.” In RNA World 2.0, we discuss the somewhat semantic division between so-called “metabolism first” and “genetics first” ideas of the origin of life, and reveal that while RNA most likely did play a role in early life, the ubiquitous molecule doesn’t tell the whole story.
