A genetic spin doctor sets snail shells to swirl clockwise, new research confirms. And the twist in this story comes at the beginning — when snail embryos are just single cells. Working at the Tokyo ...

Researchers in Japan have altered the destiny of a rout of snails by changing the chirality of their shells before birth. By delicately manipulating a batch of developing embryos, the scientists ...

A snail with a shell spiraling to the right can’t mate readily with a lefty. So, changes in the single gene that controls shell direction have created new snail species, say researchers. Among the 20 ...

Marc McKee, a professor in McGill's Faculty of Dentistry and the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, and his team, along with collaborators from Johns Hopkins University, shed light on how certain ...

Symmetry is a feature of many plants, animals and even some molecules — like water. But that’s not the case with snails and their coiled shells. They are chiral — asymmetrical in such a way that they ...

Two shells lie on the beach, next to a clump of seaweed. Both shells are spirals. The shell on the left is the empty outer shell of an auger snail, which grew around and with its spiral-shaped body.

Snails have shells the moment they're born, but it's kind of hard to tell. In fact, it's hard to even see a baby snail. Some are nearly microscopic, such as Angustopila psammion, whose adult-sized ...

Ned’s shell spirals to the left meaning it can only mate with another similar snail (Giselle Clarkson via AP) A hunt has been launched in New Zealand to find a suitable mate for Ned the snail. Ned, a ...