For the New York Times, James Gorman profiles a geneticist team led by Christopher B. Kaelin and their recent findings in cat coat pattern formation. An instance of reaction diffusion (formulated in Alan Turing’s 1952 paper “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”), embryonic analysis of 200 kitten litters identified Dkk4, the gene that acts as an inhibitor to create “spots, stripes, and everything in between,” and how tissues lay the groundwork for those patterns—before hair or hair follicles appear.