Vitamin A Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Vitamin A, including details on retinol, benefits, dosage, supplements, deficiency, information.

Somite formation: where left meets right.

Brent AE

Department of Biology, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, New York 10003, USA. ab664@nyu.edu

Somites are the bilaterally symmetric embryonic precursors of the vertebrate skeleton and axial muscle. Three recent studies reveal that somites form asymmetrically in the absence of retinoic acid signaling. These results uncover an unexpected relationship between somitogenesis and left-right patterning, and suggest that bilateral somite formation is regulated along the left-right axis.

Published 20 June 2005 in Curr Biol, 15(12): R468-70.
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