The mathematician Alan Turing is famous for his work on artificial intelligence and cracking the German codes during WWII, (as shown in one of my favorite films, The Imitation Game), but he also worked on the issue of why nature has certain patterns. Turing speculated that two chemicals, one an “activator” and one an “inhibitor,” could work together to make certain patterns, like a stripe in a zebrafish. The inhibitor was important because it would “shut off” the activator, so the same pattern would be created over and over again. Turing was influenced by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, but scientists weren’t sure whether his theories were correct.
When I researched this further, I found an article about how researchers have actually proven recently that Turing’s theory was correct. The scientists determined that “in mouse embryos, a molecule called FGF, or fibroblast growth factor, acts as a ridge activator, and SHH, or sonic hedgehog, acts as an inhibitor. When the researchers turned off FGF, the mice formed faint traces of the ridges that are normally made. Conversely, when they turned off SHH, the ridges morphed into one big mound.” It turned out that changing the expression of one factor influenced the behavior of the other—just as Turing’s equations predicted. I also found the study. I would like to learn more about these connections between chemical and biological processes and patterns in nature.
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