Proceedings

EPJ E - How the fruit fly got its spots

EPJ E - How the fruit fly got its spots

The eye of the Drosophila (fruit fly) is characterized by a neat hexagonal patterns, a fascinating system to study pattern formation in biology. A recent paper published in EPJ E proposes a new mechanism to explain the emergence of this pattern.

Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor examined a spatially discrete, three variable reaction-diffusion model inspired by the interactions that create a periodic pattern of gene expression in the Drosophila eye. This model creates a regular pattern behind a moving front, as observed in eye discs, through a novel “switch and template” mechanism. In order to better understand this mechanism, the authors performed a detailed study of the model’s behaviour in one dimension, using a combination of analytic methods and numerical searches of parameter space. They find that patterns are created robustly, provided that there is an appropriate separation of time scales and that self-activation is sufficiently strong. The model operates in a strongly nonlinear regime where the final pattern depends on the initial conditions as well as on parameter values. This study highlights the important role that cellularisation and cell-autonomous feedback can play in biological pattern formation.

To read the full paper "Switch and template pattern formation in a discrete reaction-diffusion system inspired by the Drosophila eye" by M.W. Pennington and D.K. Lubensky, Eur. Phys. J. E 33 (2010) click here.

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

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