Alan Turing (photo statue ©Lmno) is known as one of the fathers of computer science but in 1952 he published an article titled “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” in which he wrote a theory to explain how the various biological organisms take different forms in a natural way, starting from a uniform and homogeneous state. Unfortunately, Turing committed suicide in 1954 and only recently a group of researchers from Brandeis University and the University of Pittsburgh published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” the results of a study that confirms that theory.
According to Alan Turing, identical biological cells differentiate and change their form through a process called intercellular reaction-diffusion. Chemicals react with each other and spread across a space, such as between the cells of an embryo.
These chemical reactions need an inhibitory agent to suppress the reaction and an excitatory agent to activate the reaction. Spreading these agents through the embryo, chemically different patterns of cell will be created activating some of them and inhibiting some other ones creating different cells from ones that were originally identical.
Seth Fraden, a physics professor, and Irv Epstein, a chemistry professor, created a ring of synthetic cell-like structures in which chemical activation and inhibition reactions occurred to test the model devised by Alan Turing. The result is that all six patterns from predicted were observed and also a seventh unpredicted one.
These findings could have an impact yet to be assessed on the study of biological development, to better understand how similar patterns emerge in nature. In biology, morphogenesis regards the form of tissues, organs, whole organisms but also the positions of various types of specialized cells.
This new research on biological morphogenesis could also be useful in materials research. For example, the model created by Alan Turing could help create biological-like processes to create soft robots, partly consisting of silicone parts, with predefined shapes. It would be an appropriate application for an idea from one of the fathers of computer science.
This verification of Alan Turing’s theory came over 60 years after its publication, confirming that his mind was extraordinarily brilliant. It’s also a further reason for shame for the British authorities who ostracized him for his homosexuality pushing him to commit suicide.
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