The development of avian cutaneous appendages, feathers and scales, is known to arise
from the epithelial–mesenchymal interaction. Here we show that FGF10 is associated with …

Turing mechanisms can yield a large variety of patterns from noisy, homogenous initial
conditions and have been proposed as patterning mechanism for many developmental …

The developmental basis of morphological complexity remains a central question in
developmental and evolutionary biology. Feathers provide a unique system to analyze the …

Background: Retinoic acid is implicated in the induction of the gene encoding Sonic
hedgehog (Shh) that specifies anteroposterior positional values and promotes growth of the …

How organs are shaped to specific forms is a fundamental issue in developmental biology.
To address this question, we used the repetitive, periodic pattern of feather morphogenesis …

Gap junctions allow the direct and bidirectional transfer of small molecules between cells.
Polyamine sensitivity, which has been observed for a certain gap junction in vitro, confers …

Limb growth in higher vertebrate embryos is initially due to the outgrowth of limb buds and
later continues as a result of elongation of the skeletal elements. The distal limb …

The reaction–diffusion system is one of the most studied nonlinear mechanisms that
generate spatially periodic structures autonomous. On the basis of many mathematical …

In the course of animal development, complex structures form autonomously from the
apparently shapeless egg. How cells can produce spatial patterns that are much larger than …

Periodic patterning is a fundamental organizing process in biology. Using a feather
reconstitution assay, we traced back to the initial stage of the patterning process. Cells …