Unwinding snail chirality
The left-right asymmetry of snails, including the direction of shell coiling, is determined by the delayed effect of a maternal gene on the chiral twist that takes place during early embryonic cell divisions. Yet, despite being a well-established classical problem, the identity of the gene and the means by which left-right asymmetry is established in snails remain unknown. In a recently published paper, we demonstrated the power of new approaches, especially RAD-Seq and fibre-FISH, for later identification of the chirality gene. Read the full text here.