DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
The right slant
Cell 121, 633–644 (2005)
One of the biggest questions in developmental biology is how embryos that begin as uniform balls of cells end up asymmetric. Experiments in mice provided a clue when researchers discovered that hair-like cilia protruding from embryonic cells in mice rotate, somehow setting up a flow in
the surrounding fluid that defines the left–right axis.
A team led by Nobutaka Hirokawa of the University of Tokyo supplies another piece of the puzzle by showing exactly how the cilia’s movement sets up the directional flow. The researchers found that the cilia rotate around an axis tilted 40 backwards. The same rotation was observed in rabbit and medakafish embryos, suggesting that the mechanism, previously studied only in mice, defines asymmetry in other vertebrates.

Paraphrasing of Research Highlight:
When studying developmental biology researchers found that embryos start as a uniform ball of cells, however, they were questioning why do these embryos end up asymmetric. Research experiments were done on mice, researchers found that the cilia on the embryos on mice rotate and this rotation controls the flow of the surrounding fluid explaining the left-right axis.
Further research was done and the experiments showed that the rotation of the cilia on the embryo is rotated 40 degrees backward on an axis.
Experiments were also made in rabbits and medakafish embryos and the rotation in the cilia was observed. These results explain asymmetry in the other vertebrates.

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