A TALE of shrimps: Genome-wide survey of homeobox genes in

The homeodomain-containing proteins are an important group of transcription factors found in most eukaryotes including animals, plants and fungi. Homeobox genes are responsible for a wide range of critical developmental and physiological processes, ranging from embryonic development, innate immune homeostasis to whole-body regeneration. With continued fascination on this key class of proteins by developmental and evolutionary biologists, multiple efforts have thus far focused on the identification and characterization of homeobox orthologs from key model organisms in attempts to infer their evolutionary origin and how this underpins the evolution of complex body plans. Despite their importance, the genetic complement of homeobox genes has yet been described in one of the most valuable groups of animals representing economically important food crops. With crustacean aquaculture being a growing industry worldwide, it is clear that systematic and cross-species identification of crustacean homeobox orthologs is necessary in order to harness this genetic circuitry for the improvement of aquaculture sustainability. Using publicly available transcriptome data sets, we identified a total of 4183 putative homeobox genes from 120 crustacean species that include food crop species, such as lobsters, shrimps, crayfish and crabs. Additionally, we identified 717 homeobox orthologs from 6 other non-crustacean arthropods, which include the scorpion, deer tick, mosquitoes and centipede. This high confidence set of homeobox genes will now serve as a key resource to the broader community for future functional and comparative genomics studies. Alvina G. Lai ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] : Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Author roles: Chang WH Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing; : Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Lai AG Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing No competing interests were disclosed. Competing interests: Chang WH and Lai AG. How to cite this article: A TALE of shrimps: Genome-wide survey of homeobox genes in 120 species from 2018, :71 (doi: ) diverse crustacean taxa [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review] F1000Research 7 10.12688/f1000research.13636.1 © 2018 Chang WH and Lai AG. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated Licence with the article are available under the terms of the (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver This work was supported by the EMBO Fellowship and the Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship to AGL. Grant information: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 17 Jan 2018, :71 (doi: ) First published: 7 10.12688/f1000research.13636.1 Referee Status: AWAITING PEER REVIEW 17 Jan 2018, :71 (doi: ) First published: 7 10.12688/f1000research.13636.1 17 Jan 2018, :71 (doi: ) Latest published: 7 10.12688/f1000research.13636.1 v1 Page 1 of 7 F1000Research 2018, 7:71 Last updated: 17 JAN 2018