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Accepted · first revision · record

Title: How cell-level chirality sets left-right body asymmetry
Plain: Animals that look symmetric outside place organs such as the heart asymmetrically inside. In several species this traces to handedness in individual cells, and how that small bias becomes an organ-scale asymmetry is not understood.
Precise: Given chiral torque generation by the actomyosin cortex (counter-rotating cortical flows observed in C. elegans embryos and chiral cell shapes in the Drosophila hindgut), determine the continuum mechanism (chiral active stresses in an active-gel description) and the amplification steps that convert cell chirality into consistent organ rotation or looping, predicting handedness and the fraction of reversed individuals in mutants.
Settled by: A chiral active-gel model with measured parameters that predicts organ handedness and reversal frequencies in cytoskeletal mutants.
Kind: phenomenon
Answer type: mechanism
References: (empty)
Literature status: open
Status note: (empty)
Posed since: (empty)