Abstract
The class 3 Hox genes of insects have diverged—in expression domain and functional role during embryogenesis—compared to those of other bilaterians. Whereas the canonical ortholog (Hox3) is involved in axial patterning of the embryonic body, the insect ortholog (zen) is involved in extraembryonic development. In this paper, we present sequence data from the centipede Strigamia maritima, the collembolan Folsomia candida, and the insect Thermobia domestica. With these data, complete coding sequences are now known for orthologs in all four arthropod classes and all three great bilaterian clades. We make use of this large Hox3/Zen ortholog data set to define differences in the protein sequences encoded by insect zen genes compared to all other Hox3 orthologs. Folsomia and Thermobia are particularly relevant to determining when zen diverged from Hox3 over evolutionary time. Intriguingly, the orthologs of these two species have some protein sequence features typical of Hox3 and some typical of Zen, and they differ from one another for these features.
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Acknowledgment
We thank Ariel Chipman for providing Strigamia and Thermobia RNA; Lorraine Shakesheff for assistance with degenerate PCR during a student project with K.A.P.; Max Telford for advice on shotgun sequencing and Dave Matus for advice on RACE PCR; Daniel Papillon for sharing unpublished data and assistance with the Daphnia genome; and Bárbara Negre and Richard Stancliffe for helpful comments on the manuscript. K.A.P. is supported by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship. This research was supported by BBSRC grant BBS/B/07519 to M.A.
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Communicated by P. Simpson
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Panfilio, K.A., Akam, M. A comparison of Hox3 and Zen protein coding sequences in taxa that span the Hox3/zen divergence. Dev Genes Evol 217, 323–329 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0133-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0133-8