Chemists at University College London (UCL) have found a way to show how two of life’s essential ingredients—RNA and amino acids—might have come together nearly four billion years ago.
Imagine a field of microscopic flowers that can fold, unfurl, and even kick off a chemical reaction without a gardener in sight. Researchers at the University of North Carolina have at Chapel Hill built just such shape-shifting “soft robots,” and the most interesting part isn’t what they are, but what they might be able to do.