A physicist has led a study describing an elegantly simple solution to a puzzle that has taxed biologists for centuries: how complex branching patterns of tissues arise. In the centenary year of the ...

Branching patterns are prevalent in our natural environment and the human body, such as in the lungs and kidneys. For example, specific genes that express growth factor proteins are known to influence ...

Summary Plants exhibit dependences between shoot growth and branching that generate highly structured patterns. The characterization of the patterning mechanism is still an open issue because of the ...

In the centenary year of the publication of a seminal treatise on the physical and mathematical principles underpinning nature - On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson - a Cambridge physicist ...