Creating Asymmetry and Keeping Symmetry: the Underlying Genetic and Signaling Mechanisms

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About this Research Topic

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Background

Bilaterian animals show impressive mirror image symmetry along with ordered asymmetry. The symmetry of the jaw, spinal column, or extremities is central to tasks such as feeding, locomotion, or flight. The asymmetric distribution of most internal organs such as the heart, but also left-right differences in paired organs such as asymmetries found between left and right lungs or brain hemispheres all play an important role in organ function. Remarkable, asymmetry develops by breaking symmetry and symmetry of paired organs is maintained by actively buffering size variations. How symmetry breaking occurs along-side of symmetry assurance is a long-lasting mystery and a fascinating biological problem.

Our main goal is to tackle the question of how symmetries are maintained or broken in different tissues during development and, importantly, how these are coordinated. For instance, how can limb symmetry be maintained while internal organs become asymmetric even though both processes use several overlapping systemic cues and originate from the same, or closely juxtaposed, cell populations? Furthermore, while mechanisms underlying symmetry breaking in the early embryo are well studied, there are many species-specific differences that have made it hard to understand how asymmetry mechanisms have evolved. Last, less attention has been paid to the maintenance of symmetry, aside from studies in which random (fluctuating) asymmetries emerge in normally symmetrical structures. We will focus on how fluctuating asymmetries are normally buffered and what these new findings tell us about developmental robustness more broadly.

This Research Topic invites researchers to submit original research, perspectives or review articles that explore the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing development along the left-right axis. Themes include (but are not limited to):

- Mechanisms that control the establishment of asymmetries along the left-right axis: chirality-based mechanisms, mechanical processes and signaling pathways involved.
- Left-right asymmetry across evolution: is there a grand unified left-right patterning mechanism or has symmetry-breaking evolved multiple times in animals?
- Mechanisms that sense and buffer variations and ensure the development and robustness of left-right symmetry including developmental stability, robustness and counteracting asymmetry-promoting signals.

Keywords: Symmetry, Asymmetry, Symmetry breaking, Symmetry assurance, Left-right axis, Development, Molecular mechanisms, Evolution, Chirality-based mechanisms, Mechanical processes, Signalling pathways

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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