Latest Pattern formation Stories

A team of UK researchers claims to have put forth the first ever experimental evidence in support of a long-standing theory about how biological patterns such as a leopard's spots or a tiger's stripes are formed. The study was the work of experts from King's College London, and according to a February 19 press release from the school, "The findings provide evidence to support a theory first suggested in the 1950s by famous code-breaker and mathematician Alan Turing," who championed the...

Synthetic biology helps scientists sort out pattern formation Many living things have stripes, but the developmental processes that create these and other patterns are complex and difficult to untangle. Now a team of scientists has designed a simple genetic circuit that creates a striped pattern that they can control by tweaking a single gene. "The essential components can be buried in a complex physiological context," said Terence Hwa, a professor of physics at the University of...