Snails and humans use same genes to tell right from left

piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 2 days (www.eurekalert.org)

Biologists have tracked down genes that control the handedness of snail shells, and they turn out to be similar to the genes used by humans to set up the left and right sides of the body.

The finding, reported online in advance of publication in Nature by University of California, Berkeley, researchers, indicates that the same genes have been responsible for establishing the left-right asymmetry of animals for 500-650 million years, originating in the last common ancestor of all animals with bilateral body organization, creatures that include everything from worms to humans

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FoxJ1 Helps Cilia Beat a Path to Asymmetry

piggy submitted, created time 1 month 3 weeks (www.sciencedaily.com)

New work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies reveals how a genetic switch, known as FoxJ1, helps developing embryos tell their left from their right. While at first glance the right and left sides of our bodies are identical to each other, this symmetry is only skin-deep. Below the surface, some of our internal organs are shifted sideways—heart and stomach to the left, liver and appendix to the right.

Creating this left-right asymmetry is a key step in early embryonic development, and requires hundreds of tiny hairlike structures called nodal cilia to beat in unison

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