Homeoboxes in cnidarians.
Homeoboxes have previously been documented from various phyla of triploblastic, coelomate and pseudocoelomate, animals. We report here the first homeoboxes from cnidarians, a phylum of diploblastic organisms thought to occupy a near-basal position in metazoan phylogeny. We have sequenced three partial (77 bp) fragments of Antennapedia (Antp) class homeoboxes from the hydroids Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus and Eleutheria dichotoma. A pair of fragments, Cnox-2-Hs and Cnox-2-Ed, from the two species differ in nucleotide sequences but have identical derived amino acid sequences. A gene tree produced by parsimony analysis shows that these two fragments cluster within the Antp homeobox lineage. The third fragment, Cnox-1, clusters as a sister group of the other Antp class homeoboxes.
Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511.
B
B
Schierwater
M
M
Murtha
M
M
Dick
F H
FH
Ruddle
L W
LW
Buss
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D003063:Cnidaria / Q000235:genetics*; D004247:DNA; D005801:Genes, Homeobox; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction
D004247:DNA