Whole-Body Enantiomorphy and Maternal Inheritance of Chiral Reversal in the Pond Snail Lymnaea stagnalis

Abstract

Sinistral and dextral snails have repeatedly evolved by left-right reversal of bilateral asymmetry as well as coiling direction. However, in most snail species, populations are fixed for either enantiomorph and laboratory breeding is difficult even if chiral variants are found. Thus, only few experimental models of chiral variation within species have been available to study the evolution of the primary asymmetry. We have established laboratory lines of enantiomorphs of the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis starting from a wild population. Crossing experiments demonstrated that the primary asymmetry of L. stagnalis is determined by the maternal genotype at a single nuclear locus where the dextral allele is dominant to the sinistral allele. Field surveys revealed that the sinistral allele has persisted for at least 10 years, that is, about 10 generations. The frequency of the sinistral allele showed large fluctuations, reaching as frequent as 0.156 in estimate under the assumption of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The frequency shifts suggest that selection against chiral reversal was not strong enough to counterbalance genetic drift in an ephemeral small pond. Because of the advantages as a model animal, enantiomorphs of L. stagnalis can be a unique system to study aspects of chirality in diverse biological disciplines.