Living beings are characterized by the differentiation of their cells and biological processes. Cellular specialization in many cases has produced quasi-periodic structures (such as the geometric patterns of the animal fur or the symmetry of the limbs). But what are the general principles which, in very different contexts, underlie this type of processes?
An answer in this sense comes from a research published in Plos Biology, the result of the collaboration of a team of the Department of Physics of the University of Florence (Unifi) and of the Weizmann Institute of Science of Israel ("Robust stochastic Turing patterns in the development of a dimensional cyanobacterial organism "). The researchers studied Anabaena, a bacterium that carries out photosynthesis, and have come to propose a mathematical model that explains the formation mechanism of the cellular pattern, which characterizes this organism.
