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Yasemin Saplakoglu

Yasemin Saplakoglu

Staff Writer

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Latest Articles

A blueprint-like rendering of the biomechanics of a bird wing.
biomechanics

Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
August 3, 2022
Comment
Read Later

Partnerships between engineers and biologists have begun to reveal how birds evolved their superb maneuverability.

Closeup of Akiko Iwasaki of the Yale School of Medicine against a dark background.
Q&A

An Immunologist Fights Covid with Tweets and a Nasal Spray

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
June 21, 2022
Comment
Read Later

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist who became a lifeline for the worried and the curious during the pandemic, thinks that nasal spray vaccines could be the next needed breakthrough in our fight against the coronavirus.

A satellite photo of the complex of rivers in the Amazon.
biodiversity

Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazon’s Hyper-Biodiversity

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
June 7, 2022
Comment
Read Later

The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching rivers, which serve as invisible fences that continuously barricade and merge bird populations.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of a polyribosome.
origins of life

Life’s First Peptides May Have Grown on RNA Strands

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
May 24, 2022
Comment
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RNA and peptides coevolving in the primordial world might have jointly served as a precursor to the modern ribosome.

Illustration of a wooly mammoth with its hind quarters still being assembled from digital blocks.
explainers

Why ‘De-Extinction’ Is Impossible (But Could Work Anyway)

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
May 9, 2022
Comment
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Several projects are aiming to bring back mammoths and other species that have vanished from the planet. Whether that’s technically possible is beside the point.

Illustration of a network of self-replicating RNA molecules evolving and getting more complex.
origins of life

In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
May 5, 2022
Comment
Read Later

When researchers gave a genetic molecule the ability to replicate, it evolved over time into a complex network of “hosts” and “parasites” that both competed and cooperated to survive.

Illustration that combines elements of three- and four-leaf clovers with the letter for nucleotides in codons.
synthetic biology

Life With Longer Genetic Codes Seems Possible — but Less Likely

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
April 11, 2022
Comment
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Life could use a more expansive genetic code in theory, but new work shows that improving on three-letter codons would be a challenge.

Simulated microscopy image of light shining through mitochondrial bundles and emerging as tight beams.
biophysics

Mitochondria Double as Tiny Lenses in the Eye

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
April 5, 2022
Comment
Read Later

The optical properties of mitochondrial bundles in the retina may improve how efficiently the eye captures light.

An illustration of a polyglycine molecule among the constellations.
origins of life

Peptides on Stardust May Have Provided a Shortcut to Life

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
March 8, 2022
Comment
Read Later

The discovery that short peptides can form spontaneously on cosmic dust hints at more of a role for them in the earliest stages of life’s origin, on Earth or elsewhere.


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