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Chiral blastomere arrangement dictates zygotic left–right asymmetry pathway in snails

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, November 2009
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Title
Chiral blastomere arrangement dictates zygotic left–right asymmetry pathway in snails
Published in
Nature, November 2009
DOI 10.1038/nature08597
Pubmed ID
Authors

Reiko Kuroda, Bunshiro Endo, Masanori Abe, Miho Shimizu

Abstract

Most animals display internal and/or external left-right asymmetry. Several mechanisms for left-right asymmetry determination have been proposed for vertebrates and invertebrates but they are still not well characterized, particularly at the early developmental stage. The gastropods Lymnaea stagnalis and the closely related Lymnaea peregra have both the sinistral (recessive) and the dextral (dominant) snails within a species and the chirality is hereditary, determined by a single locus that functions maternally. Intriguingly, the handedness-determining gene(s) and the mechanisms are not yet identified. Here we show that in L. stagnalis, the chiral blastomere arrangement at the eight-cell stage (but not the two- or four-cell stage) determines the left-right asymmetry throughout the developmental programme, and acts upstream of the Nodal signalling pathway. Thus, we could demonstrate that mechanical micromanipulation of the third cleavage chirality (from the four- to the eight-cell stage) leads to reversal of embryonic handedness. These manipulated embryos grew to 'dextralized' sinistral and 'sinistralized' dextral snails-that is, normal healthy fertile organisms with all the usual left-right asymmetries reversed to that encoded by the mothers' genetic information. Moreover, manipulation reversed the embryonic nodal expression patterns. Using backcrossed F(7) congenic animals, we could demonstrate a strong genetic linkage between the handedness-determining gene(s) and the chiral cytoskeletal dynamics at the third cleavage that promotes the dominant-type blastomere arrangement. These results establish the crucial importance of the maternally determined blastomere arrangement at the eight-cell stage in dictating zygotic signalling pathways in the organismal chiromorphogenesis. Similar chiral blastomere configuration mechanisms may also operate upstream of the Nodal pathway in left-right patterning of deuterostomes/vertebrates.

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The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 286 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Japan 5 2%
Germany 3 1%
Netherlands 2 <1%
United Kingdom 2 <1%
United States 2 <1%
France 1 <1%
Canada 1 <1%
New Zealand 1 <1%
Belgium 1 <1%
Other 5 2%
Unknown 263 92%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 60 21%
Student > Ph. D. Student 47 16%
Student > Bachelor 34 12%
Professor > Associate Professor 31 11%
Student > Master 31 11%
Other 51 18%
Unknown 32 11%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 130 45%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 49 17%
Chemistry 22 8%
Physics and Astronomy 11 4%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 8 3%
Other 30 10%
Unknown 36 13%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 July 2015.
All research outputs
#14,723,579
of 22,660,862 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#83,720
of 90,600 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#134,738
of 165,175 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#428
of 473 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,660,862 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 90,600 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 99.2. This one is in the 7th percentile – i.e., 7% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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