- Born
- 23 December 1938
- Died
- 11 February 2016
- Country
- Germany
- Field
- physicist, biologist, nuclear physicist
- In the library
- 1 work, named in 10 passages elsewhere
- Facts from
- Wikidata · Open Library
Activator and inhibitor model
Ball describes the Gierer and Meinhardt model as two interacting ingredients, an autocatalytic activator and an inhibitor that suppresses that autocatalysis3. Ball adds that the two authors did not know of Turing's work until a referee of their paper pointed it out, a point Ball attributes to a personal communication with Meinhardt2. Davies and Glykofrydis list Turing first and Meinhardt later as the two origins of reaction-diffusion patterning5.
Use in planarian regeneration
Durant and colleagues say the dynamic models of Meinhardt and Gierer can explain polarity, correct re-patterning and scaling in planarian worms after surgery. Rink cites Meinhardt (2008, 2009) for the view that self-assembling organizers, built from dynamic interactions between cells, can account for head or tail regeneration without pre-localized determinants4. Rink uses this to frame how a wound site might choose between head and tail signalling.
Later extensions
Grodstein and colleagues cite Meinhardt (2021) as proposing a mechanism in Hydra similar to one in which a positional gradient sets the scale of a reaction-diffusion pattern6. They contrast it with their own model, which can set that scale arbitrarily in different places rather than only as a steady increase from one end of the field to the other.
devised a theory of biological pattern formation caused by diffusing reagents that paralleled Turing's [13].
Ball P, 2015 · Forging patterns and making waves from biology to geology: a commentary on… · open at passage 30They did not knowing about Turing's work until a referee of their paper pointed it out (Meinhardt 2012, personal communication).
Ball P, 2015 · Forging patterns and making waves from biology to geology: a commentary on… · open at passage 30One is an ‘activator’, which is autocatalytic and so introduces positive feedback. The other is an ‘inhibitor’, which suppresses the autocatalysis of the activator.
Ball P, 2015 · Forging patterns and making waves from biology to geology: a commentary on… · open at passage 30First, they self-assemble on basis of dynamic interactions between cells, which can account for pervasive head or tail regeneration competence without the need for pre-localized determinants (Meinhardt 2008, 2009).
Rink JC, 2013 · Stem cell systems and regeneration in planaria · open at passage 48The first-proposed mechanisms for this were the reaction-diffusion systems proposed by Turing [12] and, later, by Meinhardt [13]; both versions use diffusion-mediated chemical signalling.
Davies JA, Glykofrydis F, 2020 · Engineering pattern formation and morphogenesis · open at passage 6Meinhardt (2021) has proposed a similar mechanism in Hydra. Both of these serve to build an RD pattern where λRD varies
Grodstein J, McMillen P, Levin M, 2023 · Closing the loop on morphogenesis: a mathematical model of morphogenesis by… · open at passage 24
