Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Turing pattern
Summary
The Turing pattern is a concept introduced by English mathematician Alan Turing in a 1952 paper titled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" which describes how patterns in nature, such as stripes and spots, can arise naturally and autonomously from a homogeneous, uniform state. The pattern arises due to Turing instability which in turn arises due to the interplay between differential diffusion (i.e., different values of diffusion coefficients) of chemical species and chemical reaction. The instability mechanism is unforeseen because purely diffusion process is anticipated to have a stabilizing influence on the system.
In his paper, Turing examined the behaviour of a system in which two diffusible substances interact with each other, and found that such a system is able to generate a spatially periodic pattern even from a random or almost uniform initial condition. Prior to the discovery of this instability mechanism arising due to unequal diffusion coefficients of the two substances, diffusional effects were always presumed to have stabilizing influences on the system.
Turing hypothesized that the resulting wavelike patterns are the chemical basis of morphogenesis. Turing patterning is often found in combination with other patterns: vertebrate limb development is one of the many phenotypes exhibiting Turing patterning overlapped with a complementary pattern (in this case a French flag model).
Before Turing, Yakov Zeldovich in 1944 discovered this instability mechanism in connection with the cellular structures observed in lean hydrogen flames. Zeldovich explained the cellular structure as a consequence of hydrogen's diffusion coefficient being larger than the thermal diffusion coefficient. In combustion literature, Turing instability is referred to as diffusive–thermal instability.
The original theory, a reaction–diffusion theory of morphogenesis, has served as an important model in theoretical biology. Reaction–diffusion systems have attracted much interest as a prototype model for pattern formation.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (4)
BIO-244: Physics of the cell
Living organisms evolve in a physical world: their cells respond to mechanics, electricity and light. In this course, we will describe the behavior and function of cells using physical principles.
MATH-642: Artificial Life
We will give an overview of the field of Artificial Life (Alife). We study questions such as emergence of complexity, self-reproduction, evolution, both through concrete models and through mathematica
ChE-402: Diffusion and mass transfer
This course aims to provide an in-depth understanding of diffusion and mass transfer, an essential tool for the
chemical engineers.