Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere: the way trees form branches, the way cities divide into neighborhoods, the way the brain organizes into regions. Nature loves modularity — a limited number of self-contained units that combine in different ways to perform many functions. But how does this organization arise? Does it follow a detailed genetic blueprint, or can these structures emerge on their own?A new study from MIT Professor Ila Fiete suggests a surprising answer.In findings published Feb. 18 in Nature, Fiete, an associate investigator in the McGovern Institute…
