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Gavin Harper is a mathematician working right at the heart of genetics

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March 2010
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perturbation

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How does the uniform ball of cells that make up an embryo differentiate to create the dramatic patterns of a zebra or leopard? How come there are spotty animals with stripy tails, but no stripy animals with spotty tails? Lewis Dartnell solves these, and other, puzzles of animal patterning.

Tags: perturbation : reaction-diffusion equations : animal patterning : morphogenesis : partial differentiation : diffusion : saturation : threshold