Despite decades of research, morphogenesis along the various body axes remains one of the major mysteries in developmental biology. A milestone in the field was the realisation that a set of closely related regulators, called Hox genes, specifies the identity of body segments along the anterior-posterior (AP) axis in most animals. Hox genes have been highly conserved throughout metazoan evoluti...

E2A-PBX1 is the oncogene produced at the t(1;19) chromosomal breakpoint of pediatric pre-B-cell leukemia. Expression of E2A-Pbx1 induces fibroblast transformation and myeloid and T-cell leukemia in mice and arrests differentiation of granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor-dependent myeloblasts in cultured marrow. Recently, the Drosophila melanogaster protein Exd, which is highly relat...

Hox genes are renowned for patterning animal development, with widespread roles in developmental gene regulation. Despite this importance, their evolutionary origin remains obscure, due to absence of Hox genes (and their evolutionary sisters, the ParaHox genes) from basal lineages and because the phylogenies of these genes are poorly resolved. This has led to debate about whether Hox and ParaHo...

Hox genes pattern the fates of the ventral ectodermal Pn.p cells that lie along the anteroposterior (A/P) body axis of C. elegans. In these cells, the Hox genes are expressed in sequential overlapping domains where they control the ability of each Pn.p cell to fuse with the surrounding syncytial epidermis. The activities of Hox proteins are sex-specific in this tissue, resulting in sex-specific...

The Hox-2.1 gene is one of homeobox-containing genes located in lheHox-2 cluster on mouse chromosome 11. In this study, we have examined transcription of the Hox-2.1 gene during differentiation of F9 embryonal carcinoma cells induced by treatment with retinoic acid. The level of Hox-2.1 mRNA increases rapidly after induction of differentiation and then falls. Nuclear run-on experiments demonstr...

The Hox-2.1 gene is one of homeobox-containing genes located in the Hox-2 cluster on mouse chromosome 11. In this study, we have examined transcription of the Hox-2.1 gene during differentiation of F9 embryonal carcinoma cells induced by treatment with retinoic acid. The level of Hox-2.1 mRNA increases rapidly after induction of differentiation and then falls. Nuclear run-on experiments demonst...

Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is associated with a reciprocal and balanced translocation involving the retinoic acid receptor-alpha (RARalpha). All-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) is used to treat APL and is a potent morphogen that regulates HOX gene expression in embryogenesis and organogenesis. HOX genes are also involved in hematopoiesis and leukemogenesis. Thirty-nine mammalian HOX genes ha...

The class I homeobox genes located in four clusters in mammalian genomes (HOX A, HOX B, HOX C, and HOX D) appear to play a major role in fetal development. Previous surveys of homeobox gene expression in human leukemic cell lines have shown that certain HOX A genes are expressed only in myeloid cell lines, whereas HOX B gene expression is largely restricted to cells with erythroid potential. We...

Hox cluster organization represents a valuable marker to study the effects of recent genome duplication in salmonid fish (25-100 Mya). Using polymerase chain reaction amplification of cDNAs, BAC library screening, and genome walking, we reconstructed 13 Hox clusters in the Atlantic salmon containing 118 Hox genes including 8 pseudogenes. Hox paralogs resulting from the genome duplication preced...

Molecular etiology of thyroid cancers has been widely studied, and several molecular alterations have been identified mainly associated with follicular and papillary histotypes. However, the molecular bases of the complex pathogenesis of thyroid carcinomas remain poorly understood. HOX genes regulate normal embryonic development, cell differentiation and other critical processes in eukaryotic c...