Tomography of reaction-diffusion microemulsions reveals three-dimensional turing patterns

Tamás Bánsági, Vladimir K. Vanag, Irving R. Epstein

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

137 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Spatially periodic, temporally stationary patterns that emerge from instability of a homogeneous steady state were proposed by Alan Turing in 1952 as a mechanism for morphogenesis in living systems and have attracted increasing attention in biology, chemistry, and physics. Patterns found to date have been confined to one or two spatial dimensions. We used tomography to study the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in a microemulsion in which the polar reactants are confined to aqueous nanodroplets much smaller than the scale of the stationary patterns. We demonstrate the existence of Turing patterns that can exist only in three dimensions, including curved surfaces, hexagonally packed cylinders, spots, and labyrinthine and lamellar patterns.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1309-1312
Number of pages4
JournalScience
Volume331
Issue number6022
Early online date10 Feb 2011
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11 Mar 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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