How the zebra gets its stripes: A simple genetic circuit
Thursday, October 13, 2011 - 14:30
in Biology & Nature
Developmental processes that create stripes and other patterns are complex and difficult to untangle. To sort it out, a team of scientists has designed a simple genetic circuit that creates a striped pattern that they can control by tweaking a single gene. This genetic loop is made two linked modules that sense how crowded a group of cells has become and responds by controlling their movements.