By my current understanding of biology, the genes tell each cell to do different things (differentiate, split etc) depending on the local neighbourhood of the cell (is this even right?).
How do they know to grow in symmetric pairs then if their corresponding mirror image cell is nowhere near their local neighbourhood?
In: Biology
Early on in development we are essentially a sphere of cells, then a ridge forms along the sphere, and the sphere divides from there. During these early phases, cells begin down the pathway to specificity. So it’s not like the cells on one side decide to form into a kidney, and mirror the other kidney cells on the other side. But more that in the very early stages, two separate clumps of cells decide that they are each going to become kidneys, and then those cells move further and further apart as we grow and continue their independent growth to each become a full kidney.
This is a fairly complex topic of biology, but googling “embryologic organogenesis” should give you a lot of good results and videos that explain the process in more detail.
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