1. lifelines
  2. Origin of Patterns

Origin of Patterns

By dr. dolittle on December 6, 2010.
Patterns 1.jpg

Image: Copyright BrotherSoft

Ever wonder how the patterns of stripes and spots develop in animals? Researchers Michael Cohen, Buzz Baum and Mark Miodownik were wondering the same thing and have published their findings in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. They were able to construct a mathematical model to show how developing cells communicate with each other through actin-based filopodia, which are little projections from the cells. These filopodia communicate with other cells through chemical signals that can inhibit or stimulate to indicate which color each cell should be. As the cells develop and communicate with each other, complex patterns of stripes and spots (and stars?) that we see in animals begin to emerge. You can read the article here.

Tags
Life Science

More like this

My picks from ScienceDaily
Landscape Corridors Promote Plant Diversity By Preventing Species Loss: Landscape corridors - thin strips of habitat that connect isolated patches of habitat -- are lifelines for native plants that live in the connected patches and therefore are a useful tool for conserving biodiversity. That's the…
The Ubiquity of Exaptation
On Thursday, I gave a talk at the University of Minnesota at the request of the CASH group on a rather broad subject: evolution and development of the nervous system. That's a rather big umbrella, and I had to narrow it down a lot. I say, a lot. The details of this subject are voluminous and…
Gender-Bending Chickens: Mixed, Not Scrambled
tags: evolution, evolutionary biology, gynandromorph, bilateral gynandromorph bird, half-sider, mixed-sex chimaera, sex determination, molecular biology, genetics, developmental biology, endocrinology, birds, chicken, Gallus gallus, ornithology, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-…
New and Exciting in PLoS this week
There are new articles in four PLoS journals today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg…

I just read an excellent discussion of this in a new book from the local library:
Endless Forms Most Beautiful-the new science of Evo Devo, by Sean B. Carroll. See ch.8: How the Butterfly got its spots. Highly recommended. Ch.9 is on melanism, gives a great explanation of stripes in the 3 zebra species (pg.241).