JUPITER, Fla., March 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent laboratory experiments which seek to recreate the formation of the first living cells from the basic chemical building blocks of nature are shedding new light on how life may have occurred on earth and on other planets, biologist Jack Szostak and chemist Brian Paegel said late yesterday in the annual Lasker Foundation Lecture on the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute. In his remarks, "The Origin of Cellular Life and the Emergence of Darwinian Evolution," Szostak, winner of the 2006 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine, focused on his latest studies, which seek to reconstruct the pre-evolutionary formation of living systems from basic chemical building blocks.

NSF funding in basic research yields great payoffs in scientific contributions worldwide.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement congratulating molecular biologist Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, who today was named to receive the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Dr.

By Robert S Boyd WASHINGTON -- Scientists are advancing slowly toward one of the most audacious goals humans have ever set for themselves: creating artificial life.

By Robert S. Boyd WASHINGTON - Scientists are advancing slowly toward one of the most audacious goals humans have ever set for themselves: creating artificial life.