There’s a reason fashion designers look to animal prints for inspiration. Creatures have evolved a dizzying array of patterns: stripes, spots, diamonds, chevrons, hexagons and even mazelike designs.

Turing’s ideas explain how some animal patterns arise. A spot-maker is the most basic version of Turing patterning. It involves two key substances, or morphogens, as Turing called them, that can move ...

Chris Konow researches the impact of growth on Turing patterns in the Epstein Lab. Turing patterns are named after the British mathematician Alan Turing, who proposed a mechanism for how ...