![]() A fact, whose explanation is still not entirely clear, is that in many cases the angle occurring in these spirals has a particular value known as the “golden mean angle”. a simple weed) you will most likely be able to see how, going from the bottom of the stem to the top, organs follow a spiral arrangement. If you look carefully at a random flower (e.g. It occurs in many plants and is due to the fact that plant organs are arranged along a spiral: each organ appears at a fixed angle from the previous organ. Q: Why is cauliflower’s self-similarity unique? How does a cauliflower, especially Romanesco broccoli, follow the Fibonacci sequence and fractal pattern so remarkably well?Ī: The occurrence of the Fibonacci sequence is in fact not specific to the cauliflower or Romanesco broccoli. This was needed because the repetition within the process quickly leads to a very large number of “blobs”, whose organization cannot be predicted by mere intuition or using a pen and paper. The model included a description of the geometric rules underpinning the formation of new plant organs, as well as the interactions between a few key genes known to play a role. A key element of our approach was to describe the system as we understood it in mathematical terms, and simulate its behavior using a computer. ![]() We knew that early on, but what we wanted was to understand better how the same process could generate objects seemingly as different as a common cauliflower and a Romanesco cauliflower. These repeated attempts result in accumulations of blobs characteristics of cauliflowers. The state of some cells within the blob then reverts to that of a stem and they initiate again the formation of flowers, which once again fails. With this gene missing, the plant initiates the production of a flower, but at the time when the missing gene would be needed only a “blob” has been created and the process stops. This mutation consists of the removal of a gene (in fact two very similar genes) which is used by plants at one of the early stages during the formation of flowers. Q: Please share with us your research approach and the findings from this research.Ī: It was known that formations similar to the common cauliflower occur in Arabidopsis thaliana (a small flower widely used for research in plant biology), as the result of a mutation. The specific research on cauliflower had started shortly before I arrived and was led jointly by a biologist, François Parcy and Christophe, who invited me to join the effort. A few years later, I was hired as a researcher in a team doing research on the mathematical modeling of plants, led by Christophe Godin. This is when I discovered the field of mathematical biology. How did you get interested in researching the fractal patterns of cauliflower?Ī: I studied applied mathematics and computer science as an undergraduate, and then decided to do a Ph.D. Q: Please tell us about your educational background. Farcot explains their research methods and intriguing findings. Etienne Farcot of the University of Nottingham in the UK. We are honored to be able to interview one of these scientists, Dr. Their work was published in Science in 2021. Through a combination of mathematical modeling and genetic analysis, they were able to reproduce cauliflower and Romanesco broccoli growth on the computer. Though people have long studied this repeating pattern in plants for centuries, recently a team of scientists led by François Parcy (CNRS) and Christophe Godin (Inria) identified and explained the mechanism that leads to this unique structure. ![]() This characteristic is an example of the fractal described in abstract geometry. It is especially evident in the conical-shaped florets of the Romanesco broccoli. Common cauliflowers are exceptional in this regard in that their self-similarity manifests in their florets which are composed of miniature versions of themselves. In many plants, a self-similar pattern is often observed in leaves, flowers, or shoots (e.g., Fern leaves).
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