Hoxful Monsters

Genetics is a discipline initially worked out by Gregor Mendel (Austrian monk) using common pea plants in his garden.Since then many great minds used genetics to understand important problems of biology, including the study of evolution and how plants and animals develop. The power of genetics and its importance to mankind was first time recognized by the award of Nobel prize in Physiology or medicine in 1933 to T.H.Morgan . The role of his students, especially A.H.Sturtevant, C.B. Bridges and H.J.Muller was immense in making Drosophila, a powerful model system …

Researchers have discovered a central molecular switch in fruit fly embryos that opens new avenues for studying the causes of birth defects and cancer in humans. Writing about their study in the Aug. 12 Developmental Cell, scientists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center determined the switch to be a main tuning mechanism for instructing cells whether to form sensory nerves or blood cells in different parts of the body.
The molecular switch occurs when two central control genes, Hox and Senseless (Sens), compete for influence to regulate genetic signals that instruct …

What makes Sean carroll’s articles and Books so unique and impressive? One answer to that would be some brilliant writing involved in them,which makes readers understand the content easily.Today we will look back into his article from Current Biology ,published on 20 January 1999 describing role of Ultrabithorax (Ubx) in Butterfly wings.
Hox genes control many features like segment morphology, appendage number(Arthropods) and pattern,axial morphology and limb pattern (vertebrates) ,which played significant role in modifications to their respective body plans during evolution.The morphological and functional evolution of appendages has played a …

Annelids are emerging as good model system in the field of evo devo and the recent increase in the articles published in leading journals further indicates their importance in solving evolution puzzles.Now a days various annelids are being used to decipher different aspects of evo devo like Neurogenesis, segmentation and axis formation.Today we briefly look into four articles which appeared in leading scientific journals in last few months.
We will begin with an article from an Open access Journal BMC Developmental Biology by Milana A Kulakova et al. regarding Para Hox …

ParaHox cluster is the paralogue of the Hox cluster which was before the work of Brooke et al. considered to be orphan genes.Brooke et al.5, who found that three of these orphan genes were closely linked in the AMPHIOXUS genome.The para Hox cluster caudal-type homeobox (Cdx), genomic screened homeobox (Gsh) and Xenopus laevis homeobox 8/insulin promoter factor 1 (Xlox/Ipf1) is so far restricted to Chordates but individual genes can be found scattered in other Deuterostomes and protostomes genomes.
Like Hox genes ,para Hox genes also believed to arose before the divergence …

One of the feature that makes Hox genes special is their ability to do diverse functions in different tissues of the organism.Like Specificity of Hox genes ,diversity is also a long standing question in Hox field and many researchers trying to understand :How can the same Hox protein achieves different functions? The simple answer for this could be by making use of other proteins called as co factors as in case of specificity.
Today by using Drosophila Ubx as an example we will take little insight into Hox diversity.Ultrabithorax (Ubx) …

Prior to study of Nematostella genome,it was believed that No True Hox genes were found in Cnidarians and Hox code is found only in Bilaterians.Cnidarians happens to be one of the most diverse phyla holding their place at the root of metazoan tree, provide unique insights into early Hox evolution since they constitute an outgroup to the Bilateria.The members of this phyla exhibit wide array of body forms and Hox genes known for axial patterning in all bilaterians, were identified in Cnidarians some time back.It remained a matter of debate …