Pattern formation in dense populations studied by inference of nonlinear diffusion‐reaction mechanisms

Summary Reaction‐diffusion systems have been proposed as a model for pattern formation and morphogenesis. The Fickian diffusion typically employed in these constructions model the Brownian motion of particles. The biological and chemical elements that form the basis of this process, like cells and proteins, occupy finite mass and volume and interact during migration. We propose a Reaction‐Diffusion system with Maxwell‐Stefan formulation to construct the diffusive flux. This formulation relies on inter‐species force balance and provides a more realistic model for interacting elements. We also present a variational system inference‐based technique to extract these models from spatiotemporal data for these processes. We show that the inferred models can capture the characteristics of local Turing instability that instigates the pattern formation process. Moreover, the equilibrium solutions of the inferred models form similar patterns to the observed data.