Abstract
Hox genes form clusters. Invertebrates and Amphioxus have only one hox cluster, but in vertebrates, they are multiple, i.e., four in the basal teleost fish Polyodon and tetrapods (HoxA, B, C, D), but seven or eight in common teleosts. We earlier completely sequenced the entire hox gene loci in medaka fish, showing a total of 46 hox genes to be encoded in seven clusters (hoxAa, Ab, Ba, Bb, Ca, Da, Db). Among them, hoxAa, hoxAb and hoxDa clusters are presumed to be important for fin-to-limb evolution because of their key role in forelimb and pectoral fin development. In the present study, we compared genome organization and nucleotide sequences of the hoxAa and hoxAb clusters to these of tetrapod HoxA clusters, and found greater similarity in hoxAa case. We then analyzed expression of Abd-B family genes in the clusters. In the trunk, those from the hoxAa cluster, i.e., hoxA9a, hoxA10a, hoxA11a and hoxA13a, were expressed in a manner keeping the colinearity rule of the hox expression as those of tetrapods, while those from the hoxAb cluster, i.e., hoxA9b, hoxA10b, hoxA11b and hoxA13b, were not. In the pectoral fins, the hoxAa cluster was expressed in split domains and did not obey the rule. By contrast, those from the hoxAb and hoxDa clusters were expressed in a manner keeping the rule, i.e., an ancestral pattern similar to those of tetrapods. It is plausible that this differential expression of the two clusters is caused by changes occurred in global control regions after cluster duplications.
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Acknowledgement
We thank Dr. Keiji Inohaya for the instruction regarding the medaka in situ method, Susumu Hamada, Makiko Tsutsumi, and Rieko Yamamoto for their help in manipulating the medaka Hd–rR BAC library. We also thank Dr. Johannes Martinus Dijkstra for helpful discussions. This work was supported in part by grants from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in Japan and by Grant-in-Aid for Special Project Research to H.H. (No. 12202004).
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Takamatsu, N., Kurosawa, G., Takahashi, M. et al. Duplicated Abd-B class genes in medaka hoxAa and hoxAb clusters exhibit differential expression patterns in pectoral fin buds. Dev Genes Evol 217, 263–273 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0137-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0137-4