A primordial developmental toolkit shared by all vertebrates, and described by a theory of the mathematician Alan Turing, sets the growth pattern for all types of skin structures. In 1952, well before ...

The strikingly patterned ornate boxfish has no lack of detail when it comes to its hexagonal spots and keen stripes — the intricate markings are so sharp-edged in the species that it had engineers at ...

Turing also turned his math skills to understanding how regular features could emerge on the developing embryo. Scientists since then have applied his equations to the development of such patterns as ...

Color patterns seen in fish and other animals evolved to serve various purposes. Lagunatic Photo/iStock via Getty Images Plus A thought experiment can help visualize the challenge of achieving ...

Desert plants naturally group in patterns that Alan Turing predicted in 1952. Polymath dynamo Turing is most famous for the Turing machine. Plants in Turing patterns are able to retain water and ...

Extending Turing's theory to help understand how biological patterns are created. (Image: Xavier Diego, EMBL) Alan Turing sought to explain how patterns in nature arise with his 1952 theory on ...

A mixture of two types of pigment-producing cells undergoes diffusiophoretic transport to self-assemble into a hexagonal pattern. Credit: Siamak Mirfendereski and Ankur Gupta/CU Boulder A zebra’s ...

The mechanism behind leopard spots and zebra stripes also appears to explain the patterned growth of a bismuth crystal, extending Alan Turing’s 1952 idea to the atomic scale. The stripes looked like a ...

New research revisits the Turing instability mechanism; proving mathematically how the instabilities which give rise to patterns can occur through simple reactions, and in widely varied environmental ...

Chris Konow researches the impact of growth on Turing patterns in the Epstein Lab. Turing patterns are named after the British mathematician Alan Turing, who proposed a mechanism for how ...