3 ms·
Short answer: at the single cell stage there's a cilium that, spins in a single direction and establishes chirality. People with immotile cilia thus have a 50/
by dnautics 8y ago
Short answer: at the single cell stage there's a cilium that, spins in a single direction and establishes chirality. People with immotile cilia thus have a 50/50 chance of getting SI, because the developing body chooses randomly.
- foobarbecue 8y ago!!!!!!!
- twic 8y agoI thought it was multiple cilia, wafting fluid in a current around a cavity, a bit later than the single cell stage but still very early? Either way, the reason a cilium spins in one direction rather than another is that the motor is a molecular machine built out of amino acids, and amino acids are themselves chiral. If you made a person out of amino acids with the opposite chirality, their cilia would go the other way, and their body would be flipped. It's a lovely example of magnifying something up from the molecular to the macroscopic.
- dnautics 8y agoThe motion of the cilia is not directly coupled to the chirality of the amino acids, you could probably make a cilium that obligatorily moved in the other direction with a handful of mutations.