Turing Patterns — How Uniform Tissues Become Striped
Alan Turing showed that two chemicals diffusing at different rates can turn a uniform field into stripes, spots, or hexagons. The mechanism explains real biological patterns.
Category
Biology
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Articles in Biology
Optimal Foraging — How Animals Decide What Is Worth Pursuing
Optimal foraging theory predicts how animals balance energy gains against search and handling costs. The marginal value theorem formalizes when to leave a depleted patch.
Protein Folding — How a Sequence Becomes a Shape
A protein's amino acid sequence determines its three-dimensional structure. The path from chain to function is guided by physics and evolution, and sometimes goes wrong.
Reward Prediction Error — What Dopamine Actually Signals
Dopamine neurons do not encode pleasure. They encode the gap between expected and actual reward — a signal that drives learning, not enjoyment.
Quorum Sensing — How Bacteria Count Themselves
Bacteria use chemical signals to coordinate behavior at population scale. Quorum sensing reveals how single cells act as a collective without a central controller.