About this Research Topic

Background

Pattern formation is an attractive aspect of self-assembly and self-organized phenomena in nature. Understanding the underlying mechanisms could shed light on fundamental questions such as "What is life", "How did life emerge?", and "How do natural systems evolve, form patterns, and function in order?". Static patterns (SPs) and dynamic patterns (DPs) are two types of patterns that have been extensively studied in living and non-living systems. SPs have unique spatial structures, likely found in geological systems and biological species, and arise when mass transport processes are coupled with chemical and/or physical interactions among two or more components in a medium. DPs, on the other hand, are related to dynamic phenomena, such as spatiotemporal patterns and collective motion from cells in animals. To form DPs, it is essential to have negative and positive feedback mechanisms and physical and/or mechanical synchronization mechanisms.
Even though the observed patterns in experiments across the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geology resemble those in nature and living systems, the fundamental insight into the mechanisms for some patterns is still lacking. In addition, it is challenging to share the proposed mechanisms with different areas of science, in order to explain nonlinear phenomena and establish a unified model and mechanism. It is crucial to investigate the SPs and DPs, which led to the development of novel bottom-up approaches for self-organized materials and techniques from the perspective of nonequilibrium science.

The purpose of this Research topic is to provide unified and latest views from both experimental and theoretical points of view toward pattern formation in both nonliving and living systems. In particular, the following aspects are important: (i) revealing mechanisms of observed and founded pattern formation or relating phenomena, (ii) proposing a unified mechanism to bridge phenomena in laboratory settings to those found in nature, (iii) applying basic mechanisms of pattern formation to develop artificial self-organized systems, materials, and processes.
Pattern formation emerged and observed broadly in interdisciplinary areas, therefore, both original research papers and reviews from various fields regardless of experiments, simulations, or combining them are welcome. We encourage the submission of manuscripts, which contribute (but are not limited) to the following topics :
• Turing pattern
• Liesegang phenomena
• Chemical gardens
• Front instability
• Phase separation
• Reaction-Diffusion systems
• Chemical waves
• Front propagation
• Collective motion
• Theoretical modeling
• Geochemical self-organization
• Dissipative structures
• Active matters
• Physically and chemically induced pattern formation
• Entropy
• Marangoni flow
• Flow-driven pattern formation
• Convection patterns

Keywords: Pattern Formation, Self-organization, Self-assembly, Reaction–diffusion systems, Collective motion, Oscillations, Nonlinear dynamics, Nonequilibrium

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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