Alan Turing’s Prediction About Patterns in Nature Proven True

Nature, for all of its free-wheeling weeds and lightning strikes, is also full of biological regularity: the rows of an alligator’s teeth, the stripes on a zebrafish, the spacing of a chicken’s feathers. How do these patterns arise?

Sixty years ago, with nothing but numbers, logic and some basic biological know-how, mathematician Alan Turing (best known for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence) came up with an explanation. He proposed that two chemicals—an “activator” and an “inhibitor”—work together, something like a pencil and eraser. The activator’s expression would do something—say, make a stripe—and the inhibitor would shut off the activator. This repeats, and voilà, stripe after stripe after stripe.

On Sunday, researchers reported the first experimental evidence that Turing’s theory is correct, by studying the eight evenly spaced ridges that form on the roof of a mouse’s mouth. (People, by the way, have four such ridges on each side, which help us feel and taste food.)

The scientists discovered that in mouse embryos, a molecule called FGF, or fibroblast growth factor, acts as a ridge activator, and SHH, or sonic hedgehog, acts as an inhibitor. When the researchers turned off FGF, the mice formed faint traces of the ridges that are normally made. Conversely, when they turned off SHH, the ridges morphed into one big mound. Changing the expression of one of these partners influenced the behavior of the other—just as Turing’s equations predicted.

Tragically, Turing would never know the importance of his contributions to developmental biology. The British government convicted him of homosexual acts in 1952 (for which it recently apologized), and punished him with chemical castration. Turing took his own life in 1954. This June is the 100th anniversary of his birth.