A Living Cellular Automaton: when Charles Darwin meets John von Neumann & Alan Turing

Date

Apr 4, 2019

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Michel Milinkovitch

Affiliation

Laboratory of Artificial & Natural Evolution (LANE) Dept of Genetics & Evolution | University of Geneva & SIB (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics), Switzerland

Series

MPI-CBG Thursday Seminar

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Other Topics

Biologie

Host

Suzanne Eaton

Description

Using our recent published and unpublished research results in non-model species (from lizards to elephants), I will first discuss the possibility that some specific aspects of skin morphology in vertebrates are emerging from reaction-diffusion (Turing) and mechanical instabilities. I will then suggest that, in ocellated lizards, the superposition of skin geometry (i.e., skin thickness variation due to the presence of skin scales) with the paradigmatic nonlinear microscopic system of interactions among chromatophores causes the underlying Turing-like dynamics to separate into microscopic and mesoscopic spatial scales, the latter generating a cellular automaton that computes a colour pattern. I will then discuss unpublished results that illustrate the importance of tissue growth during skin colour patterning.

Last modified: Apr 5, 2019, 2:08:26 AM