Graduate Student Seminar I Aiden Huffman, Turing Patterns: A Chemical Basis for Morphogenesis

Microsoft Teams Meeting (AMATH-Grad Students)

Speaker

Aiden Huffman | Applied Math, University of Waterloo

Title

Turing Patterns: A Chemical Basis for Morphogenesis

Abstract

Alan Turing’s contributions to the foundations of modern-day computer science, as well as his work as a cryptanalyst during the Second World War, are well known and celebrated. For many of us, this is where this story of Alan Turing ends; but his contributions to Biology are also of great importance. In 1952, Alan Turing proposed a method for morphogenesis based on chemical pattern formation and it would become one of his most famous works. It is our goal to introduce morphogenesis and the mechanism Alan Turing proposed. Additionally, we will discuss how this can be harnessed to produce a wide array of patterns in one and two dimensions, and we will likewise see how patterns can form just from the noise brought about by chemical diffusion.