Chia Seeds Reveal Turing's Mathematical Patterns in Nature
The Story
Chia seeds grown in trays gave scientists the first experimental verification in living vegetation of Alan Turing's celebrated 1952 theory of how patterns form in nature.
Turing proposed mathematical equations showing how competing factors can generate the spots, stripes, and spatial regularities seen in leopard coats, zebra stripes, and desert vegetation, arrangements now known as Turing patterns.
Brendan D'Aquino, an undergraduate computer science student at Northeastern University working with physicist Flavio Fenton of Georgia Tech, grew chia seeds in even layers and adjusted moisture availability to manipulate the key variables in Turing's equations.
The vegetation patterns that emerged matched both natural environments and computer simulations of the Turing model.
D'Aquino noted that changing the relevant parameters in the model produced the experimental results the team expected.
While Turing patterns had previously appeared in chemistry experiments and artificial systems, earlier studies had only retroactively fit models to observed patterns, so this work actively demonstrated the mechanism at work.
The findings were presented at the American Physical Society meeting in Las Vegas on March 7, 2023.
Turing proposed mathematical equations showing how competing factors can generate the spots, stripes, and spatial regularities seen in leopard coats, zebra stripes, and desert vegetation, arrangements now known as Turing patterns.
Brendan D'Aquino, an undergraduate computer science student at Northeastern University working with physicist Flavio Fenton of Georgia Tech, grew chia seeds in even layers and adjusted moisture availability to manipulate the key variables in Turing's equations.
The vegetation patterns that emerged matched both natural environments and computer simulations of the Turing model.
D'Aquino noted that changing the relevant parameters in the model produced the experimental results the team expected.
While Turing patterns had previously appeared in chemistry experiments and artificial systems, earlier studies had only retroactively fit models to observed patterns, so this work actively demonstrated the mechanism at work.
The findings were presented at the American Physical Society meeting in Las Vegas on March 7, 2023.
Why It Matters
In 1952 Alan Turing wrote equations for how competition for moisture could scatter desert vegetation into spots, mazes and stripes; until 2023 no experiment had shown the mechanism working in living vegetation. Brendan D'Aquino, a Northeastern undergraduate in Georgia Tech physicist Flavio Fenton's lab, grew chia seeds across four substrates, varied irrigation and evaporation, and watched Turing patterns emerge within a week Live Science. Two American Physical Society meeting abstracts call it the first direct validation of a vegetation model against experiments; yet by August 2026 the work rests on those conference abstracts alone, with no journal paper on the lab's own list CHAOS Lab. Watch whether the promised peer reviewed study lands before ecologists build on it.
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