TLS Online TPP Program

#Question id: 7112


Although the vertebrate body plan outwardly displays a mirror-image symmetry with regard to left and right, the internal organs are not symmetrical. How does this left-right asymmetry develop?

#Unit 5. Developmental Biology
  1. The two cells of the Nieuwkoop center (at the 32-cell stage) signal each other and become either left or right.
  2. Maternal factors that determine left and right are packaged into the egg, just as dorsalizing factors are.
  3. Differential release of Ca2+ ions on the left side leads to expression of Nodal and Pitx2 on the left.
  4. Gravity determines the left-right axis: that side which is down becomes right and that side which is up becomes left.