Introduction This workshop brought together developmental biologists and oncologists for three intense days of discussions about the recent progress that has been made on the roles of homeodomain proteins in development, haematopoiesis and leukaemogenesis. The homeo-domain is a 61-amino-acid DNA-binding motif with specific sequence and structural characteristics (Gehring & Hiromi, 1986). Homeod...

The Homeodomain Resource is a searchable, curated collection of information for the homeodomain protein family. The resource is organized in a compact form and provides user-friendly interfaces for both querying the component databases and assembling customized datasets. The current release (version 5.0, October 2002) contains 1056 full-length homeodomain-containing sequences, 37 experimentally...

Hox homeodomain proteins are developmental regulators that determine body plan in a variety of organisms. A majority of the vertebrate Hox proteins bind DNA as heterodimers with the Pbx1 homeodomain protein. We report here the 2.35 A structure of a ternary complex containing a human HoxB1-Pbx1 heterodimer bound to DNA. Heterodimer contacts are mediated by the hexapeptide of HoxB1, which binds i...

The Drosophila homeotic selector (HOM) genes encode a family of DNA binding transcription factors that specify developmental fates of different body segments by differentially regulating the activity of downstream target genes. A central question is how the HOM proteins achieve their developmental specificity despite the very similar DNA binding specificities of isolated HOM proteins in vitro. ...

TALE homeodomain proteins regulate development in many eukaryotes. Now, Lee et al. (2008) report that two TALE homeodomain proteins control zygote development of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas. This implicates TALE gene loss and diversification in the evolution of new diploid body plans that appeared when land plants evolved from algal ancestors over 450 million years ago.

The MADS domain homeotic proteins APETALA1 (AP1), APETALA3 (AP3), PISTILLATA (PI), and AGAMOUS (AG) act in a combinatorial manner to specify the identity of Arabidopsis floral organs. The molecular basis for this combinatorial mode of action was investigated. Immunoprecipitation experiments indicate that all four proteins are capable of interacting with each other. However, these proteins exhib...

Apterous is a LIM-homeodomain protein that confers dorsal compartment identity in Drosophila wing development. Apterous activity requires formation of a complex with a co-factor, Chip/dLDB. Apterous activity is regulated during wing development by dLMO, which competes with Apterous for complex formation. Here, we present evidence that complex formation between Apterous, Chip and DNA stabilizes ...

We describe the comprehensive characterization of homeodomain DNA-binding specificities from a metazoan genome. The analysis of all 84 independent homeodomains from D. melanogaster reveals the breadth of DNA sequences that can be specified by this recognition motif. The majority of these factors can be organized into 11 different specificity groups, where the preferred recognition sequence betw...

Engrailed 2 is a transcription factor belonging to the class of homeoproteins. These proteins possess a 60-residue DNA binding globular domain and play an important role in the early stages of development. We expressed and purified a 13.4 kDa fragment of Engrailed 2, which comprises a 54-residue N-terminal extension in addition to the homeodomain region. Almost all backbone and side-chain reson...