Baltimore, MD, USA. Patterns abound in nature: butterfly wings, seashell spirals, zebras stripes. Human genitals. These are all examples of patterns in nature. Pattern formation is a puzzle for both biologists and mathematicians. How does a single fertilized egg yield such delicate designs? How does a pattern emerge out of no pattern?

Using computer models and live cells, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered a specific pattern that can direct cell movement and may help us understand cell movement [N1, N2]. This study was published in Developmental Cell [N3].

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Feedback Inhibition of JAK/STAT Signaling by Apontic Is Required to Limit an Invasive Cell Population. Michelle Starz-Gaiano, Mariana Melani, Xiaobo Wang, Hans Meinhardt, and Denise J. Montell. Developmental Cell 2008 14(6): 726-738.

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There is considerable science devoted to pattern formation. It deals with the visible and statistically orderly outcomes of self-organization and the common principles behind similar patterns. In developmental biology, pattern formation describes the mechanism by which initially equivalent cells in developing tissue assume complex

Mysuru, Karnataka, India. Technologies that measure and analyze human physical and behavioral characteristics are big when machines have to figure out who you are on behalf of their human creators. There is ample precedent: we all cope with encountering new people and try to understand who you are, really.

But at first encounter, others view us by obvious externals, often by the way we walk (our gait). A team of researchers in India have been working on an expanded form of biometrics that could allow law enforcement agencies and airport security to recognize suspects based on their characteristic gait. The team has revealed details of a comprehensi

Nottingham, UK. For an organism to develop and function, the individual cells must exchange information, or communicate, with each other. Is it possible to learn their language and actually talk to the cells? Yes. In cell biology, a vesicle is a small, membrane-bounded sac. Vesicles store, transport, or digest cellular products and waste. They are a basic tool of the cell for organizing metabolism, transport, enzyme storage, as well as being chemical reaction chambers.

Scientists at the University of Nottingham (UK) used sugar groups on the vesicle surface to enable the first conversation between bacterial cells and artificial polymer vesicles. The vesicles subsequently transfer information to the cells — in the form of dye molecules.

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Sweet Talking Double Hydrophilic Block Copolymer Vesicles. Cameron Alexander. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2008 47(26): 4847–4850. doi: 10.1002 / anie.200801098. No abstract. [ Supporting Info PDF ]