Prof. Philip Maini: Turing’s Theory of Developmental Pattern Formation

Turing’s seminal paper “The chemical basis of morphogenesis“, published in 1952, proposed that pattern formation in early embryonic development was an emergent, or self-organising, phenomenon driven by diffusion. This ingeneous and highly counter-intuitive idea has formed the basis for an enormous number of subsequent studies from both experimental and theoretical viewpoints. Maini critiques the model, considers applications to skeletal patterns in the limb, animal coat markings, fish pigmentation and hai