Biology

3 breaks

Cells, bodies, evolution and everything that grows.

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Why cells stay tiny: skin grows with the square, the cell with the cube Double a cell's width and its skin grows 4 times, but the cytoplasm it must feed grows 8 times. Add diffusion, where time grows with the square of the… Biology5 min read How a leopard gets its spots: Turing's two-chemical pattern machine A leopard's spots and a zebra's stripes start out as a smooth sheet of near-identical cells. In 1952 Alan Turing showed that two interacting chemicals, one… Biology3 min read How chameleons change colour: they stretch a mirror made of crystals A chameleon doesn't change colour by mixing pigments. Under its skin sit cells packed with tiny guanine crystals, arranged in a lattice that works like a… Biology4 min read