In most animals, the placement of the internal organs has left-right (LR)asymmetry with an invariant handedness. How handedness – whether an organ lies on the right or the left – is initiated during development is unclear. On p. 5731,Bergmann and co-workers identify GPA-16, a component of a heterotrimeric G protein, as the first C. elegans protein that affects handedness. LR asymmetry in C. elegans becomes evident sometime between the four-and six-cell stages, and is determined by a shift in the orientation of specific mitotic spindles. The researchers show that loss-of-function of GPA-16 affects spindle orientations during the third cleavage and nearly randomises handedness among the resulting adult worms. Heterotrimeric G proteins are also involved in the control of asymmetric cell division, and on p. 5717, Tsou et al. show that G-protein signalling interacts with LET-99, a protein whose localisation pattern is dependent on polarity cues, to regulate spindle orientation, and thus asymmetric cell division, in early C. elegansembryos.
Initiation of handedness in C. elegans
Initiation of handedness in C. elegans. Development 1 December 2003; 130 (23): e2303. doi:
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