Pigment pas de deux puts stripes on zebrafish
Researchers watch yellow and black cells dance into patterns on fish fins
COLOR DANCE Zebrafish owe their stripes to the coordinated movement of at least two types of pigment-producing cells.
Thierry Marysael/Flickr
Scientists have long puzzled over how animals’ stripes, spots, dots, blazes and other color patterns arise. One of the most popular theories was proposed in 1952 by British mathematician Alan Turing, who showed that two chemicals spreading across a surface could spontaneously react to create patterns. By varying how chemicals diffuse and react under different conditions, Turing could reproduce many patterns seen in nature (SN: 7/17/10, p. 28).
Researchers have tried to find diffusing chemical signals that might guide color patterns in animals. But research published January 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that interactions between yellow pigmented cells and black ones helps create the striped pattern that gives zebrafish (Danio
