In A World First, Scientists Change Snail's Shell-Coiling Direction With CRISPR (nytimes.com) 49
"Most snails are 'righties'. Now scientists have found genes that can change the shell coiling direction," writes the New York Times. ( Non-paywalled version here )
Suren Enfiajyan shares their report: Studying these snails offers clues to the evolution of body plans in many animals. It also could be important for understanding why up to 10 percent of people are born with sinus inversus, a condition where their internal organs are flipped like a lefty snail's shell. Now scientists are turning to Crispr -- the powerful gene editing tool -- to figure out why some snails turn out this way. A team in Japan led by Reiko Kuroda, a chemist and biologist, has successfully used the technique to manipulate a single gene responsible for shell direction in a species of great pond snail.
The research, published last week in the journal Development, offers definitive proof of the genetic underpinnings of handedness in this species, and could lead to clues about left- and right-handed mysteries in other organisms. "Ten years ago you might not imagine there were any similarities in the left/right asymmetry of a snail and the left/right asymmetry of humans. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that is the case," said Angus Davison, an evolutionary geneticist, who has studied chiral pond snails, but was not a part of Dr. Kuroda's study...
In the current study, Dr. Kuroda and Masanori Abe used Crispr to edit out the Lsdia1 gene, and then raised the resulting mutant snails. Confirming previous work, they showed that even in the first embryonic cell, genetic information started picking sides. And by the third cleavage, when four cells become eight, the mutant cells were rotating in the opposite direction of what is expected. These snails grew into lefties, and so did their offspring. Without two working copies of Lsdia1, snails can survive with Lsdia2 -- but their shells won't coil to the right.
In the article Dr. Davison says that there's still more research to do. "Unfortunately, snail research doesn't move quickly."
Suren Enfiajyan shares their report: Studying these snails offers clues to the evolution of body plans in many animals. It also could be important for understanding why up to 10 percent of people are born with sinus inversus, a condition where their internal organs are flipped like a lefty snail's shell. Now scientists are turning to Crispr -- the powerful gene editing tool -- to figure out why some snails turn out this way. A team in Japan led by Reiko Kuroda, a chemist and biologist, has successfully used the technique to manipulate a single gene responsible for shell direction in a species of great pond snail.
The research, published last week in the journal Development, offers definitive proof of the genetic underpinnings of handedness in this species, and could lead to clues about left- and right-handed mysteries in other organisms. "Ten years ago you might not imagine there were any similarities in the left/right asymmetry of a snail and the left/right asymmetry of humans. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that is the case," said Angus Davison, an evolutionary geneticist, who has studied chiral pond snails, but was not a part of Dr. Kuroda's study...
In the current study, Dr. Kuroda and Masanori Abe used Crispr to edit out the Lsdia1 gene, and then raised the resulting mutant snails. Confirming previous work, they showed that even in the first embryonic cell, genetic information started picking sides. And by the third cleavage, when four cells become eight, the mutant cells were rotating in the opposite direction of what is expected. These snails grew into lefties, and so did their offspring. Without two working copies of Lsdia1, snails can survive with Lsdia2 -- but their shells won't coil to the right.
In the article Dr. Davison says that there's still more research to do. "Unfortunately, snail research doesn't move quickly."
from the changing-your-shell dept. (Score:5, Funny)
Yawn. Wake me up when they manage to convert these snails to zsh.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe in the not too distant future, we can finally change liberals into conservatives.
No genetic tech is neded to accomplish that. In most cases, twenty or thirty years is all it takes.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Once dementia sets in.
Re: This could be a great achievement (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
As the often mis-attributted quote says:
Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head.
Re: This could be a great achievement (Score:2)
Compromise is not compatible with most election systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Entirely possible, but there will be no reason to.
Re: (Score:2)
One in 10,000 (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
And also "sinus inversus" (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Situs == sinus? (Score:1)
Up to 10% or 0.01% (i.e. 1000 times less often) [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
When I read the summary, that seemed bizarrely high so I went to look at the article (at the risk of being excommunicated from /. for RTFA).
The New York Times has updated the article with:
The article now says:
This is huge (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the perfect sugar substitute for diet foods and drinks. But it never came to market because it was prohibitively expensive to produce. If we can genetically engineer something like a strain of corn or sugar cane which produces L-sugar instead of D-sugar...
Re: (Score:2)
That will cause the snails... (Score:4, Funny)
There's a decimal point missing.. (Score:2)
> It also could be important for understanding why up to 10 percent of people are born with sinus inversus,
I think there's a decimal point missing... (should be 0.01% ?)
Wickipedia says:
"Situs inversus is found in about 0.01%[1] of the population, or about 1 person in 10,000".
Anyone else (Score:1)
It's called situs inversus and it's not common (Score:1)
It's a 't', not an 'n', and situs inversus is nowhere near 10% prevalent.
Must be a dad... (Score:1)
All that research, hypothesis, work and confirmation, just for the punchline: "Unfortunately, snail research doesn't move quickly."