Nature Genetics
16, 79 - 83 (1997)
doi:10.1038/ng0597-79
Organization of the Fugu rubripes Hox clusters: evidence for continuing evolution of vertebrate Hox complexesSamuel Aparicio1, 8, Kelvin Hawker1, Amanda Cottage2, Yoshikazu Mikawa3, Lin Zuo4, Byrappa Venkatesh5, Elson Chen6, Robb Krumlauf7
& Sydney Brenner3
1Wellcome/CRC Institute for Developmental Biology and Cancer Research, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QR, UK and ICRF Cell Interactions Unit, MRC Centre, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2QH, UK.
2MRC HGMP Resource Centre, Hinxton Hall, Cambridge CB10 1SB, UK.
3The Molecular Sciences Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
4Sequana Therapeutics, 11099 North Terry Pines Road, Suite 160, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
5IMCB, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260.
6Advanced Center for Genetic Technology, Applied Biosystems Division of Perkin Elmer Corp, 850 Lincoln Centre Drive, Foster City, California 94404, USA.
7Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, The Ridgeway, London NW71AA, UK.
8e-mail: saparici@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk. The clustered organization of Hox genes provides a powerful opportunity to examine gene gain and loss in evolution because physical linkage is a key diagnostic feature which allows homology to be established unambiguously. Furthermore, Hox genes play a key role in determination of axial and appendicular skeletal morphology1,2 and may be a key component of the evolution of diverse metazoan body forms. Despite suggestions that changes in Hox gene number played a role in evolution of metazoan body plans3,4, there has been a general lack of evidence for such variation amongst gnathostomes (or indeed any vertebrate) and it has therefore been widely assumed that differential regulation may be the key element in all vertebrate Hox evolution. We have studied the Hox gene clusters of a teleost fish, Fugu rubripes, to test the possibility that Hox organization may have varied since the origin of jawed vertebrates. We have identified four Hox complexes in Fugu and found an unprecedented degree of variation when compared with tetrapod clusters. Our data show that: Fugu clusters are widely variant with respect to length; at least nine genes have been lost; there is a new group-2 paralogue; and pseudogene remnants of group-1 and group-3 paralogues were found in the Hoxc complex, when compared with the present mammalian clusters. We show that gene loss after duplication of the prototypical vertebrate Hox clusters is a key feature of both tetrapod and fish evolution.
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