Where do a zebra ’s stripes , a Panthera pardus ’s spot and our fingers come from ? The key was found years ago – by the man who check the Enigma computer code .
In 1952 a mathematician published a set of equations that strain to explain the patterns we see in nature , from the dappled grade insignia decorate the back of a zebra to the whorled foliage on a plant stalk , or even the complex tucking and folding that turns a clod of cells into an organism . His name was Alan Turing .
More illustrious for crack the wartime Enigma code and his contributions to mathematics , computer science and artificial intelligence , it may amount as a surprisal that Turing harboured such an sake . In fact , it was an extension of his captivation with the workings of the brain and the underlying nature of life .
The secret glory of Turing ’s wartime achiever had blow over by the 1950s , and he was hole up in the grimly industrial confines of the University of Manchester . In theory he was there to develop syllabus for one of the world ’s first electronic computers – a miscellaneous collection of valves , wires and tubes – but he found himself increasingly side - lined by greasy - fingered engineer who were more focused on nuts and bolt than numbers . This disconnection was probably intentional on Turing ’s part , rather than measured exclusion on theirs , as his attention was drifting away from computing towards large question about life-time .
It was a near fourth dimension to be excited about biology . Researchers around the world were busybodied produce to grips with the nature of genes , and James Watson and Francis Crick would soon uncover the structure of DNA in 1953 . There was also a growing interest in cybernetics – the idea of living beings as biologic computers that could be deconstructed , hacked and rebuilt . Turing was cursorily adopted into a bunch of pioneering scientist and mathematicians known as the Ratio Club , where his ideas about artificial intelligence and machine learnedness were welcomed and encouraged .
Against this backdrop Alan Turing acquire up a subject field that had spellbind him since before the war . Embryology – the science of building a child from a single fertilised egg cell – had been a hot topic in the former part of the twentieth hundred , but progress sputtered to a stop as scientist see they lacked the technical puppet and scientific fabric to figure it out . Perhaps , some thinkers concluded , the internal working of aliveness were fundamentally unknowable .
Turing view this as a cop - out . If a computer could be programme to calculate , then a biological being must also have some kind of implicit in logic too .
He prepare to work collecting flowers in the Cheshire countryside , size up the patterns in nature . Then came the equations – complex , robustious beasts that could n’t be solved by human hands and brains . fortuitously the very latest data processor , a Ferranti Mark I , had just go far in Manchester , and Turing soon put it to work cranch the figure . Gradually , his “ mathematical hypothesis of embryology ” , as he come to to it , began to take shape .
Like all the best scientific ideas , Turing ’s theory was refined and simple : any recapitulate raw normal could be created by the fundamental interaction of two thing – mote , cells , whatever – with special characteristics . Through a numerical rationale he call in ‘ response – diffusion ’ , these two components would ad lib ego - organise into spots , stripes , ring , whirl or mottled blob .
In special his care centre on morphogens – the then - unknown molecules in developing organism that control their growing shape and anatomical structure . The identity element and fundamental interaction of these chemical were , at the time , as oracular as the eponymous wartime code . ground on pioneering experiments on frog , fly and sea urchin embryos from the turn of the 20th century – involving fastidiously cutting and paste tiny bits of tissue onto other tiny bits of tissue – biologists knew they had to be there . But they had no idea how they worked .
Although the nature of morphogens was a mystery , Turing believed he might have cracked their code . His report ‘ The chemic footing of morphogenesis ’ appeared in thePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in August 1952 .
Sadly , Turing did n’t experience long enough to find out whether he was right . He took his own life in 1954 , following a judgment of conviction for ‘ gross indecency ’ and subsequent chemical castration – the penalty for being openly sunny in an illiberal time . In those two short years there was little to signpost the whirl and turns that his traffic pattern would take over the next 60 age , as biologist and mathematicians combat it out between the parallel worlds of embryology and computing .
In a cramped situation in London , insert away somewhere on the 27th storey of Guy ’s Hospital , Professor Jeremy Green of King ’s College London is point at a screen .
A program that simulates Turing patterns is running in a small window . At the top left is a square loge , filled with twist zebra - like monochrome stripes . Next to it is a brain - deform panel of equivalence . “ It ’s astonishing that Turing hail up with this out of nowhere , as it ’s not visceral at all , ” says Green , as he poke a finger at the symbols . “ But the equations are much less fearsome than you think . ”
The inwardness of a Turing system is that you have two components , both of which can scatter through space ( or at least behave as if they do ) . These could be anything from the ripples of sand on a dune to two chemicals move through the sticky liquid ecstasy holding cells together in a developing embryo . The key thing is that whatever they are , the two things spread at unlike swiftness , one faster than the other .
One component is to be auto - activating , meaning that it can turn on the machinery that makes more of itself . But this activator also produces the second component – an inhibitor that shift off the activator . Crucially , the inhibitor has to move at a faster yard than the activator through space .
The beauty of it is that Turing systems are totally self - contained , ego - starting and self - prepare . concord to Green , all that one needs to get die is just a little act of activator . The first thing it does is make more of itself . And what prevents it from ramping up forever ? As soon as it have to a certain story it switches on the inhibitor , which builds up to stop it .
“ The direction to think about it is that as the activator builds up it has a head startle , ” says Green . “ So you end up with , say , a black stripe , but the inhibitor then build up and spreads more quickly . At a certain distributor point it catches up with the activator in outer space and turn back it in its tracks . And that make one stripe . ”
From these simple components you may create a world of design . The horrendous equations are just a way of describing those two things . All you necessitate to do is aline the conditions , or ‘ parameters ’ . Tweaking the rates of spreading and decay , or changing how good the activator is at turning itself on and how quickly the inhibitor shuts it down , subtly vary the pattern to create spots or grade insignia , swirls or splodges .
Despite its elegance and simplicity , Turing ’s reaction – dissemination idea gained little ground with the majority of developmental biologists at the meter . And without the generator around to defend his ideas , they persist in the knowledge base of a small bunch of mathematicians . In the absence seizure of satisfying evidence that Turing mechanisms were playing a part in any live organization , they seemed destined to be a neat but irrelevant beguilement .
“ Well , the grade insignia are easy . But what about the horse cavalry part ? ”
– Alan Turing on the zebra , quote by Francis Crick ( 1972 )
Biologists were engaged contend with a bigger mystery : how a tiny blob of cells engineer itself to create a drumhead , tail , limb , legs and everything in between to build a new being .
In the belated 1960s a new explanation appeared , championed by the eminent and persuasive embryologist Lewis Wolpert and carried aloft by the legion of developmental biologists that follow in his footsteps . The concept of ‘ positional information ’ suggests that cellular phone in a developing embryo good sense where they are in relation to an implicit in mapping of molecular signals ( the mysterious morphogens ) . By fashion of explanation , Wolpert roll the Gallic signal flag .
Imagine a rectangular block of cell in the shape of a flag . A strip of cellular phone along the left - hand boundary are pump out a morphogen – get ’s call it Striper – that gradually diffuse out to create a smooth slope of signaling , high-pitched to low from left to right . smell out the floor of Striper around them , the cells begin to act as consequently . Those on the left over turn blue if the stage of Striper is above a certain specific threshold , those in the middle turn white in response to the fair level of Striper they detect , while those on the far rightfield , bathing in the very crushed amounts of Striper , go red . Et voila – the Gallic masthead .
Wolpert ’s flag example was round-eyed to savvy , and developmental life scientist loved it . All you had to do to build an organism was to set up a landscape painting of morphogen gradients , and cells would know exactly what to become – a bit like painting by phone number . More importantly , it was clear to researchers that it worked in real life-time , thanks to chickens .
Even today , chicken conceptus are an attractive path to study fauna exploitation . Scientists can cut a window in the shell of a fertilised hen ’s egg to watch the biddy inside , and even fiddle about with tweezers to keep in line the grow fertilized egg . What ’s more , chicken wings have three prospicient bony structure forget inside the backsheesh , analogous to our fingers . Each one is different – like the three stripes of a Gallic sword lily – realise them the perfect system for testing out Wolpert ’s thought .
In a series of landmark experiment in the sixties , John Saunders and Mary Gasseling of Wisconsin ’s Marquette University cautiously trend a piece from the downhearted side of a develop biddy ’s wing bud – imagine contain a chunk from the sharpness of your deal by the footling finger – and stuck it to the upper ‘ thumb ’ side .
Instead of the usual three digits ( thumb , middle and little ‘ fingers ’ ) , the leave chicken had a mirror wing – little finger , halfway , ovolo , thumb , mediate , trivial fingerbreadth . The obvious conclusion was that the region from the base of the offstage was develop a morphogen gradient . mellow levels of the gradient told the wing electric cell to make a little digit , fair 1 instructed the middle digit , and low levels made a thumb .
It was hard to reason with such a definitive result . But the ghost of Turing ’s thought still haunted the interference fringe of biology .
In 1979 a physicist - turned - life scientist and a physical pill pusher caused a bit of a bustle . Stuart Newman and Harry Frisch published a newspaper in the high - visibility journalScience showing how a Turing - eccentric mechanism could explain the patterning in a chicken ’s finger .
They simplify the developing three - dimensional limb into a flavourless rectangle and figured out reaction – dissemination equations that would mother undulation of an imaginary fingerbreadth - make morphogen within it as it grew . The patterns generated by Newman and Frisch ’s framework are clumsy and square , but they look unmistakeably like the bones of a robot hand .
They argue that an underlying Turing pattern score the digit , which are then given their case-by-case characteristic by some form of superimposed gradient – of the variety proposed by the Gallic flag simulation – as opposed to the gradient itself aim the creation of the digits .
“ People were still in an exploratory mode in the 1970s , and Turing ’s own newspaper was only 25 year old at that point . scientist were hearing about it for the first time and it was interesting , ” says Newman , now at New York Medical College in the USA . “ I was favourable to get physics - orient biologists to review my paper – there was n’t an political theory on the tree branch that had lay out in , and hoi polloi were still wondering how it all puzzle out . ”
It was a credible alternative to Wolpert ’s gradient idea , prominently publish in a leading diary . According to Newman , the receipt was ab initio lovesome . “ Straight after it was publish , one of Wolpert ’s associates , Dennis Summerbell , wrote me a letter saying that they involve to consider the Turing musical theme , that it was very important . Then there was silence . ”
A year later , Summerbell ’s horizon had changed . He published a joint report with biologist Jonathan Cooke , which made light that he no longer considered it a valid melodic theme . Newman was shocked . “ From that percentage point on nobody in that group ever mentioned it , with one exception – Lewis Wolpert himself once cited our paper in a symposium report in 1989 and dismissed it . ”
The majority of the developmental biota community did not consider Turing design of import at all . Fans of the positional information poser close ranks against Newman . The invitations to talk at scientific meetings dried up . It became hard for him to bring out papers and get funding to pursue Turing models . newspaper after paper came out from scientist who supported the French flag model .
Newman explicate : “ A mint of them get to be editor at journals – I knew some colleague who feel that pressure was put on them to keep our ideas out of some of the serious journals . In other areas mass were as opened to new idea as you might expect , but because Wolpert and his scientific descendants were so attached to his idea it became part of the culture of the limb populace . All the meetings and special edition of journal were all centred around it , so it was very hard to displace . ”
Further reverse came from the fruit flyDrosophila melanogaster – another being beloved of developmental life scientist . For a while the regimented stripes that form in the fly ball ’s developing embryo were imagine to make grow through a Turing mechanism . But eventually they turned out to be create through the complex interplay of morphogen gradient trip specific patterns of gene natural process in the ripe spot at the correct fourth dimension , rather than a self - striping scheme .
Newman was disappointed by the failure of the research residential district to take his musical theme seriously , despite countless minute of further piece of work on both the numerical and molecular sides . For decades , his and Frisch ’s theme languish in obscureness , haunting the same scientific territory as Turing ’s original newspaper publisher .
“ I ’ll take spots , then , ” pronounce the Leopard , “ but do n’t make ’em too vulgar - big . I would n’t look like Giraffe – not for ever so . ”
– ‘ How The Leopard Got His Spots ’ , from Rudyard Kipling ’s Just So Stories ( 1902 )
luxuriously up in the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona is an situation paper with brightly dyed pictures of embryonic mouse paws . Each one evidence dandy stripes of explicate bones fanning out inside blob - like budding limb – something the way ’s decorator , organisation biologist James Sharpe , is positive can be explicate by Turing ’s poser .
Turing ’s musical theme is simple , so one can easily reckon how it could explain the rule we see in nature . And that ’s part of the problem , because a uncomplicated likeness is n’t proof that a system of rules is at piece of work – it ’s like watch the face of Jesus in a piece of music of toast . Telling biologic Just So floor about how thing have do to be is a dangerous plot , yet this sort of thinking was used to apologize the French signal flag mannikin too .
In Sharpe ’s perspective it was the volaille ’s fault . “ If study of limb development had started with a computer mouse , ” he read , “ the whole history would have been very different . ”
In his opinion there was a construct - in bias right from the offset that digits were fundamentally unlike from each other , ask specific single instructions for each one ( offer by accurate morphogen ‘ coordinate ’ , according to the French signal flag model ) . This was one of the primary arguments made against a role for Turing patterns being involved in limb development – they can only ever get the same thing , such as a chevron or a daub , again and again .
So how could a Turing organisation produce the three typical finger of a chick ’s limb ? Surely each one must be tell to arise in a sure way by an underlying slope ‘ map ’ ? But a skirt only has three fingers . “ If they had 20 , you would see that was n’t the case , ” says Sharpe , jiggle his finger towards me by agency of demonstration . “ They ’d all look much more similar to each other . ”
I depend down at my own hired man and see his head . I have four fingers and a thumb , and each finger’s breadth does n’t seem to have specially alone indistinguishability of its own . Sure , there are pernicious difference in size , yet they ’re basically the same . accord to Sharpe , the estimable grounds that they are n’t that different comes from one of the most obvious but incorrect assumptions about the trunk : that people always have five fingers .
In reality the numeral of fingerbreadth and toes is one of the least full-bodied thing about the way we ’re made . “ We do n’t always have five , ” he says , “ and it ’s surprisingly rough-cut to have more . ” In fact , it ’s thought that up to one in 500 small fry is brook with spare finger’s breadth on their hands or foot . And while the Gallic fleur-de-lis model ca n’t calculate for this , Turing patterns can .
By definition Turing organization are self - orchestrate , make consistent pattern with specific holding depending on the parameters . In the case of a striped pattern , this means that the same set - up will always create stripes with the same aloofness ( or wavelength , as mathematicians call it ) between them . If you disrupt the normal , for example by removing a chunk , the system will attempt to fill in the escape bits in a highly characteristic way . And while Alan Mathison Turing systems are proficient at engender repeating figure with a ordered wavelength , such as veritable - sized fingers , they ’re less effective at bet how many they ’ve made , hence the incentive digits .
Importantly , a particular Alan Turing system can only make the same thing over and over again . But look closely at the body and there are many examples of repeating anatomical structure . In many brute , including ourselves , the digit and toe are more or less all the same . But , according to the signal flag exemplar , structures created in response to different levels of morphogen would all have to be different . How to explain the fact that the same thing can be ‘ read ’ out from a gamey and low-pitched morphogen level ?
Sharpe maintains that the concept of an underlying molecular ‘ road mapping ’ just does n’t hold up . “ I do n’t think it ’s an exaggeration to say that for a long time a lot of the developmental biota community has thought that you have these seas of gradients washing over a whole pipe organ . And because they ’re go in different directions , every part of the organ has a different co-ordinate . ”
In 2012 – the centenary of Turing ’s birthing and 60 year since his ‘ chemical morphogenesis ’ theme – Sharpe evidence that this mind ( at least in the limb ) was wrong .
The proof was neatly demonstrated in a paper by Sharpe and Maria Ros at the University of Cantabria in Spain , published inScience . Ros used transmitted engineering science techniques to consistently remove member of a particular category of genes from mouse . Their targets were the Hox cistron , which act a fundamental role in organising the body design of a developing embryo , include patterning shiner paws and human hands .
Getting rid of any of these crucial regulator might be expected to have some fair major effects , but what the researchers saw was positively eccentric . As they knocked out more and more of the 39 Hox genes found in mice , the resulting animals had more and more fingers on their paw , snuff it up to 15 in the animals miss the most genes .
significantly , as more Hox genes were cut and more fingers appear , the spacing between them got smaller . So the increased act of fingers was n’t due to large manus , but to smaller and small stripes fitting into the same distance – a Graeco-Roman assay-mark of a Turing system , which had never been observed before in mouse limbs . When Sharpe craunch the Book of Numbers , Turing ’s equations could account for the extra finger Ros and her squad were go out .
That ’s great for the dear - identical digit of a mouse , I say , but it does n’t explicate why the chick ’s three digits are so different . Sharpe scribbles on a piece of newspaper publisher , drawing a Venn diagram of two seedy overlapping roofy . One is label “ PI ” for positional entropy à la Wolpert , the other “ SO ” for self - organising arrangement such as Turing blueprint . Tapping at them with his pen , he says , “ The answer is not that Alan Turing is right and Wolpert was amiss , but that there ’s a combination at work . ”
Wolpert himself has concede , to a certain extent , that a Turing system could be capable of pattern finger’s breadth . But it ca n’t , by definition , impart the difference between them . Morphogen gradients must mold on top of this established formula to give the digits their single characteristics , from quarter round to pinky , splice together Wolpert ’s positional information idea with Turing ’s self - organise one .
Other real - aliveness examples of Turing systems that have been quietly accumulating over the past two decade are now being noticed . A 1990 paper from a trinity of Gallic chemists described the first unambiguous experimental evidence of a Turing structure : they notice a banding of regular muscae volitantes appear in a strip of gel where a colour - generating chemical reaction was fall out – the tell - tale signal of the organisation at body of work .
While take elegantly peel marine angelfish , Japanese researcher Shigeru Kondo noticed that rather than their streak have bigger as the fish senesce ( as happens in mammal like zebras ) , they kept the same spacing but increased in number , branching to fill the space usable . calculator mannikin revealed that a Turing pattern could be the only explanation . Kondo went on to show that the stripe running along the length of a zebrafish can also be explain by Turing ’s mathematics , in this case thanks to two different character of cells interacting with each other , rather than two corpuscle .
It turns out that the patterned coat of cats , from Acinonyx jubatus and leopard to domesticated tabby , are the result of Turing mechanism working to fill in the blank biological sail of the skin . The statistical distribution of hair follicles on our headway and the feathers on birdie are also thanks to Turing - type ego - establishment .
Other researcher are focusing on how Turing ’s mathematics can excuse the way tubes within an embryo ’s developing chest of drawers split over and over again to create delicate , branched lungs . Even the regular array of teeth in our jaws probably have there by Alan Mathison Turing - esque patterning .
Meanwhile in London , Jeremy Green has also find that the rugae on the roof of your back talk – the repeated ridge just above your front teeth that get burn off easily if you eat a too - hot slice of pizza – owe their existence to a Turing pattern .
As well as fish skins , feathers , pelt , tooth , rugae and the os in our handwriting , James Sharpe thinks there are plenty of other part of the body that might be created through self - organising Turing pattern , with positional information put down on top . For a start , while our digit are clearly stripes , the clustered ivory of the carpus could be viewed as spots . These can easily be made with a few pinch to a Turing equation ’s parameters .
Sharpe has some more controversial musical theme for where the mechanism might be at work – perhaps pattern the regular array of rib and vertebra running up our spine . He even suspects that the celebrated stripes in fruit fly ball embryos have more to do with Turing patterning than the rest of the developmental biology community might have expected .
Given that he works in a building clad in horizontal wooden saloon , I require if he ’s started to see Turing patterns everywhere he look . “ I ’ve been through that phase angle , ” he laughs . “ During the centenary yr it really was Turing everywhere . The exciting possible action for me is that we ’ve misunderstood a whole fortune of organisation and how easy it can be to trick ourselves – and the whole community – into pee up Just So Stories that seem to fit and being glad with them . ”
Stuart Newman agrees , his 1979 theory now back out of the shadow . “ When you begin tugging at one thread , a draw of thing will fall aside if you ’re on to something . They do n’t want to blab about it , not because it ’s wrong – it ’s easy to dismiss something that ’s awry – but probably because it ’s right . And I think that ’s what turned out to be the case . ” ;
Slowly but surely , researchers are patch together the role of Turing systems in creating biological structure . But until recently there was still one thing needed to prove that there ’s a Turing pattern at study in the branch : the identities of the two component part that get it .
That mystery story has now been lick by James Sharpe and his team in a paper put out in August 2014 , again in the journalScience . Five years in the fashioning , it combines delicate embryo work with hardcore figure crunching .
Sharpe count on that the components want to fire a Turing design in the limb must show a stripy pattern that reflects the very early developing finger – either switch on in the next fingers and off in the cells destined to become the gaps , or vice versa .
To find them , alumna student Jelena Raspopovic roll up cubicle from a developing black eye limb bud , in which only the mere hint of gene action that leads to digit organisation can be seen . After separate the two case of cells , and much scrupulous molecular analytic thinking , some interesting molecular defendant popped out . Using computer modelling , Sharpe was able-bodied to exactly recap a gradual coming into court of digits that mirror what they see in actual mouse paws , based on the activity patterns of these components .
Intriguingly , unlike the neat two - part system invoke by Turing , Sharpe retrieve that three different molecules play together in the branch to make fingers . One is Sox9 , a protein that tells cells to “ make os here ” in the develop digits . The others are signals post by two biologic messenger system : one anticipate BMP ( bone morphogenetic protein ) signalise , which switches on Sox9 in the finger , and another courier atom recognize as WNT ( pronounced “ wint ” ) , which turn it off in the gaps between fingers .
Although classic Alan Mathison Turing systems appeal just two components – an activator and an inhibitor – this situation is a piffling more complicated . ; “ It does n’t seem to boil down to literally just two things , ” Sharpe explains . “ actual biologic networks are complex , and in our case we ’ve boiled it down to two signalling nerve tract rather than two specific molecules . ”
Further confirmation came when they went the other way of life – from the model to the embryo . Another of Sharpe ’s students , Luciano Marcon , tweaked the computer programme to see what would happen to the shape if each signalling nerve tract was plough down . In the simulation , reducing BMP signalling lead to a computer - generated paw with no finger . Conversely , turning down WNT predicted a limb made entirely of digits fused together .
When tested in real life , using tiny clump of limb bud tissue taken from early mouse embryo and grown in Petri dishes , these predictions come true . Treating the civilization with drug that dampen down each footpath bring out exactly what the syllabus had predicted – no fingers , or all fingers . An alternate model with both signals turned down at the same clock time foretell two or three fat fingers or else of five swell digits . Again , using both drugs at once on real black eye limb buds created exactly the same pattern . Being able to throw from the fashion model to the embryo and back again – making testable predictions that are borne out by experiments – is a key piece of trial impression that things are working in the way Sharpe think .
And if the hypothesis is finally take over , and we figure out how and where Turing system of rules are used to create bodily structure in nature , what can we do with this knowledge ? Quite a passel , according to Jeremy Green .
“ you could experience without rugae but the things like your heart valve or your whole palate , they really matter , ” he says . “ The regenerative medics working on any stem cadre engineering science or cellphone therapy in the future are go to require to infer how these are made . The growth factor research in the eighties was the basics of the stem cell therapies that are initiate to go into clinical trials now , but it inspired the whole earthly concern of regenerative medicine . That ’s the kind of timescale we ’re talking about . ”
At Guy ’s Hospital he sees close - up what happens when developing fit awry . His department specialises in birth defects affecting the boldness and skull , and Green trust that infer the underlying molecular freak and bolt is the paint to ready them . “ What we ’re doing now is very theoretical , and we can fantasise about how it ’s going to be utilitarian , but in 25 years that ’s the kind of cognition we ’ll need to have . It ’ll probably be occupy for granted by then , but we ’ll need to know all this Turing stuff to be able to construct a undecomposed consistence . ”
In the last years of Alan Turing ’s life he witness his mathematical dream – a programmable electronic information processing system – sputter into existence from a temperamental collection of wire and tubes . Back then it was up to of scranch a few numbers at a snail ’s pace . Today , the smartphone in your pouch is throng with compute engineering that would have blown his intellect . It ’s take almost another lifetime to play his biological visual modality into scientific reality , but it ’s turning out to be more than a neat explanation and some fancy equation .
With thanks to Dagmar Iber for additional word .
Contributors
Fact checker : Cameron Bird
Copyeditor : Rob Reddick
Illustrator : Job Boot
Art director : Peta Bell
References
Alan Turing ’s original 1952 composition ‘ The chemical base of morphogenesis ‘ , outlining his ideas and the equations stomach them .
James Sharpe and Maria Ros’s2012 newspaper , evince that a Turing form is at work in the shiner tree branch .
The2014 stick with - up , revealing the molecules involved in the limb - patterning Turing system .
Thedefinitive biography of Alan Turing , by Andrew Hodges .
A simple account of how Turing pattern work in biological system , from Kele Cable .
Chemistry World looks back onthe history of Turing patterns in strong-arm and biological systems .
This articlefirst appeared on Mosaicand is republished here under Creative Commons permit . Mosaic is dedicated to exploring the scientific discipline of life . Each calendar week , it print a feature on an aspect of biota or practice of medicine that affects our lives , our wellness or our bon ton ; it tells stories with real depth about the idea , trends and people that repel contemporaneous living sciences . Mosaicis published by the Wellcome Trust , a global large-hearted fundament that seeks to push back extraordinary improvements in human and brute wellness . It covers subject area that fit with the Trust ’s mission and vision , but is n’t limited to the research the Trust funds .
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