ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
What determines direction of asymmetry: genes, environment or chance?
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Early-life environment shapes claw bilateral asymmetry in the European lobster (Homarus gammarus).Biology open · 2025Article
- Determinants of Human Asymmetry: Does Asymmetrical Retinal Vasculature Predict Asymmetry Elsewhere in the Body?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Directional asymmetry in gonad length indicates moray eels (Teleostei, Anguilliformes, Muraenidae) are "right-gonadal".Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Cell chirality exhibition of brain microvascular endothelial cells is dependent on micropattern width.RSC advances · 2022Article
- Genetic assimilation and the evolution of direction of genital asymmetry in anablepid fishes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Extreme developmental instability associated with wing plasticity in pea aphids.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The direction of genital asymmetry is expressed stochastically in internally fertilizing anablepid fishes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The unlimited potential of the great pond snail,eLife · 2020Article
- Internet 'shellebrity' reflects on origin of rare mirror-image snails.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Asymmetry in genitalia is in sync with lateralized mating behavior but not with the lateralization of other behaviors.Current zoology · 2020Article
- Imperfect and askew: A review of asymmetric genitalia in araneomorph spiders (Araneae: Araneomorphae).PloS one · 2020Review
- Gene(s) and individual feeding behavior: Exploring eco-evolutionary dynamics underlying left-right asymmetry in the scale-eating cichlid fishEcology and evolution · 2018Article
- From chemical metabolism to life: the origin of the genetic coding process.Beilstein journal of organic chemistry · 2017Review
- Introduction to provocative questions in left-right asymmetry.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Conspicuous asymmetries seen in many animals and plants offer diverse opportunities to test how the development of a similar morphological feature has evolved in wildly different types of organisms. One key question is: do common rules govern how direction of asymmetry is determined (symmetry is broken) during ontogeny to yield an asymmetrical individual? Examples from numerous organisms illustrate how diverse this process is. These examples also provide some surprising answers to related questions. Is direction of asymmetry in an individual determined by genes, environment or chance? Is direction of asymmetry determined locally (structure by structure) or globally (at the level of the whole body)? Does direction of asymmetry persist when an asymmetrical structure regenerates following autotomy? The answers vary greatly for asymmetries as diverse as gastropod coiling direction, flatfish eye side, crossbill finch bill crossing, asymmetrical claws in shrimp, lobsters and crabs, katydid sound-producing structures, earwig penises and various plant asymmetries. Several examples also reveal how stochastic asymmetry in mollusc and crustacean early cleavage, in Drosophila oogenesis, and in Caenorhabditis elegans epidermal blast cell movement, is a normal component of deterministic development. Collectively, these examples shed light on the role of genes as leaders or followers in evolution.This article is part of the themed issue 'Provocative questions in left-right asymmetry'.
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