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The zebrafish hoxDb cluster has been reduced to a single microRNA

Nature Genetics volume 38, pages 601–602 (2006)Cite this article

To the editor:

The animal hox clusters consist of clustered homeodomain transcription factors involved in patterning of the body axes and were formed by tandem duplications1. Non-vertebrates possess one cluster containing a maximum of 14 genes. After the major genome duplications in the vertebrate lineage, the clusters stayed intact, and the tetrapod land vertebrates today possess four hox clusters (A, B, C and D). The number of genes differs in each cluster as a result of increased freedom to mutate after duplication. This has also allowed them to diverge and to adopt novel developmental roles2. Teleost fish underwent an additional more recent genome duplication and thus possess a theoretical number of eight hox clusters (named Aa, Ab, Ba, Bb, etc.)3. After the fish-specific duplication, a similar relaxation-mutation process took place during which whole clusters are believed to have disappeared; all diploid teleosts in which the hox clusters have been described seem to posses only seven instead of eight clusters3,4. The medaka (Oryzias latipes) and the two pufferfish species (Takifugu rubripes, Tetraodon nigroviridis) have only one hoxC cluster homolog, and in zebrafish (Danio rerio), only one hoxD cluster has been described.

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Figure 1: Genomics and expression of mir-10d and the hoxDb cluster.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 64, Leiden, 2333AL, The Netherlands

    Joost M Woltering & Antony J Durston

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  1. Joost M Woltering
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  2. Antony J Durston
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Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

LAGAN Vista plot of the zebrafish hoxDb cluster with the human hoxD cluster. (PDF 146 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

LNA probe sequences. (PDF 10 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 11 kb)

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Woltering, J., Durston, A. The zebrafish hoxDb cluster has been reduced to a single microRNA. Nat Genet 38, 601–602 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0606-601

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