Vertebrate left-right asymmetry: old studies and new insights

Publication Type
Journal contribution
Authors
Blum, M., Steinbeisser, H., Campione, M., and Schweickert, A.
Year of publication
1999
Published in
Cell Mol Biol (Noisy-le-grand) <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=10512183&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum">PMID:
Band/Volume
45/5
Page (from - to)
505-516
Abstract

During vertebrate embryonic development, the organs of the chest and abdomen, heart, lung and gastrointestinal tract, acquire characteristic asymmetric positions with respect to the left-right body axis. In the beginning of the 20th century Hans Spemann and his co-workers described manipulations of amphibian embryos which resulted in inversion of organ laterality in a predictable manner. Hedwig Wilhelmi concluded from these experiments that determinants on the left side of the embryo specify laterality, and Meyer postulated that a mediator should transfer this positional information to the forming heart. In this review we discuss the classical experiments in the light of recent advances in the molecular understanding of left-right development, with a focus on the mediator role of the homeobox gene Pitx2.

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