Biological action at a distance: Correlated pattern formation in adjacent tessellation domains without communication.

ABSTRACT: Tessellations emerge in many natural systems, and the constituent domains often contain regular patterns, raising the intriguing possibility that pattern formation within adjacent domains might be correlated by the geometry, without the direct exchange of information between parts comprising either domain. We confirm this paradoxical effect, by simulating pattern formation via reaction-diffusion in domains whose boundary shapes tessellate, and showing that correlations between adjacent patterns are strong compared to controls that self-organize in domains with equivalent sizes but unrelated shapes. The effect holds in systems with linear and non-linear diffusive terms, and for boundary shapes derived from regular and irregular tessellations. Based on the prediction that correlations betwee

SUBMITTER: Brooke JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8989308 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature