Mercola M
Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Semin Cell Dev Biol. 1999 Feb;10(1):109-16. doi: 10.1006/scdb.1998.0280.
Asymmetric heart tube looping and chamber morphogenesis is a complex process that is just beginning to be understood at the genetic level. Rightward looping is the first embryological manifestation of consistently oriented, left-right asymmetric development of nearly all visceral organs. Intuitively, invariant anatomical asymmetry must derive from a novel mechanism capable of integrating dorsoventral and anteroposterior information. The details of this process are emerging for several vertebrates and reveal that overall left-right asymmetry, once polarized with respect to dorsoventral and anteroposterior axes, unfolds through distinct left- and right-sided programs of gene expression. These, in turn, regulate expression of cardiac and chamber-specific genes which guide heart morphogenesis and differentiation.
心脏管的不对称环化和腔室形态发生是一个复杂的过程，目前才刚刚开始在基因层面上被理解。向右环化是几乎所有内脏器官持续定向的左右不对称发育的第一个胚胎学表现。直观地说，不变的解剖学不对称性必定源自一种能够整合背腹和前后信息的新机制。这个过程的细节正在几种脊椎动物中显现出来，并且揭示出，一旦相对于背腹和前后轴极化，整体的左右不对称性就会通过不同的左右侧基因表达程序展开。这些程序进而调节心脏和腔室特异性基因的表达，这些基因引导心脏的形态发生和分化。
