PROJECT DESCRIPTION

How do Zebrafish get their stripes? Why do we have only 5 digits on each hand?

Here's one possible answer: Turing Pattern.

Turing Pattern is a type of spatial pattern suggested by the British mathematician Alan Turing. He proposed that these patterns could be created by the network of two chemicals which have different diffusion rate. These two molecules are called the activator and inhibitor.

Because of its simplicity, the theory has attracted scientist in many fields, and thus various research has been carried out in the last 60 years. However, it was not easy to prove directly if those patterns are produced by the reaction-diffusion systems or another mechanism. Living systems are so complex that most research was exclusively theoretical. Biologists still face a big problem: identification of proper molecules acting as activator and inhibitor.

We therefore reconstructed a Turing system using two advantages of synthetic biology; controllability and biological directness. By letting whole E. Coli cells, whose motility were controlled, communicate with each other, we succeeded in making the whole system work more identically than any previous researches. This project should surely be a great step for understanding more about morphology and some other related fields of science. Now, the new door of synthetic biology has opened and awaits you to come in!