Articles by

Yasemin Saplakoglu

Magnetic Minerals May Have Given Life Its Molecular Asymmetry

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.In 1848, when Louis Pasteur was a young...

How Insect Brains Melt and Rewire During Metamorphosis

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.On warm summer nights, green lacewings flutter around...

How Your Brain Distinguishes Memories From Perceptions

Memory and perception seem like entirely distinct experiences, and neuroscientists used to be confident that the brain...

This Brain Molecule Decides Which Memories Are Happy—or Terrible

Further evidence of this bias comes from the reaction of the mice when they were first put...

Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazon’s Hyper-Biodiversity

From the window of a passenger plane flying over the Amazon, the view is breathtaking. “It’s just...

Could Life Use a Longer Genetic Code? Maybe, but It’s Unlikely

As wildly diverse as life on Earth is—whether it’s a jaguar hunting down a deer in the...

Mitochondria Double as Tiny Lenses in the Eye

A mosquito watches you through a lattice of microscopic lenses. You stare back, fly swatter in hand,...

Peptides on Stardust May Have Provided a Shortcut to Life

Billions of years ago, some unknown location on the sterile, primordial Earth became a cauldron of complex...