Abstract
Bilaterians with overall left-right symmetric external bodies often have internal organs that display left-right asymmetry. In a new study, Michael Lang and colleagues study the male genitalia of Drosophila pachea to investigate how left-right asymmetry could have evolved de novo. They find that male genital lobe asymmetry has evolved through the co-option of an existing developmental process - genitalia tissue rotation. To find out more about this work, we caught up with first author Bénédicte Marie Lefèvre and corresponding author Michael Lang, CNRS researcher at the Laboratoire - Evolution, Génomes, Comportement, Ecologie (EGCE).
