{"id":98,"date":"2026-08-23T08:45:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T08:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/?page_id=98"},"modified":"2026-08-23T09:38:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T09:38:25","slug":"reaction-and-diffusion","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/?page_id=98","title":{"rendered":"Reaction and Diffusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Turing&#8217;s 1952 insight &mdash; that reacting and diffusing chemicals can pattern a tissue &mdash; is foundational to morphogenesis. In Cognimed it returns with a precise division of labour.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The head is the reaction.<\/strong> Each head&#8217;s MLP is the local per-cell gene-kinetics rule &mdash; the reaction term. It is not an alternative to a differential equation; it is the reaction function of one, learned from and traceable to the genome.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The field is the diffusion.<\/strong> Gap junctions and ligand diffusion couple the per-cell rule across the tissue, and the coupled system becomes a reaction&ndash;diffusion PDE integrated by the automaton. The linear, spectral part of the operator supplies the <a href=\"https:\/\/genetec.io\/?page_id=93\">frame<\/a>; the nonlinear reaction supplies spacing and identity; lateral inhibition discretizes; adhesion binds. Run in order on one domain, these four effectors recover an organ&#8217;s axis, its bilaterally symmetric spacing, its unit count and its cohesion.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Generatively: a stable diffusion.<\/strong> Read as a generative process, morphogenesis is a genome-conditioned stable diffusion &mdash; the reaction supplies the drive, field relaxation supplies the diffusion that settles the tissue into a stable equilibrium, and the genome is the prompt. The robustness is inherited from the biology: the canonical developmental network holds its topology across orders of magnitude of parameter variation, which is why a handful of genome-read parameters suffice.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>See <a href=\"https:\/\/genetec.io\/?page_id=90\">the papers<\/a>, especially Paper 8, where the reaction-head \/ diffusion-field split is developed in full.<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Turing&#8217;s 1952 insight &mdash; that reacting and diffusing chemicals can pattern a tissue &mdash; is foundational to morphogenesis. In Cognimed it returns with a precise division of labour. The head is the reaction. Each head&#8217;s MLP is the local per-cell gene-kinetics rule &mdash; the reaction term. It is not an alternative to a differential equation; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-98","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genetec.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}