Way to Grow

摘要

"All beautiful forms must be composed of curves," declared Victorian art critic John Ruskin, "since there is hardly any common natural form in which it is possible to discover a straight line." Whether or not you agree with Ruskin's views on beauty, it is true that life seems to be dominated by curves: the curving outline of a leaf, a butterfly wing, a flower or the human body. A world of only straight edges and flat surfaces would seem alien to us. Yet we know very little about how living creatures produce these curves. It is fairly easy to see how artists draw their curves, simply by examining their brush strokes. One of Ruskin's contemporaries, William Morris, was famous for his sweeping designs that drew inspiration from natural forms (see Picture). But finding out how flowers or insects draw their curves is much harder, for here the artists are not painters, but genes.