Organization of the Hox gene cluster in the grasshopper, Schistocerca gregaria

摘要

The conserved organization of the Hox genes throughout the animal kingdom has become one of the major paradigms of evolutionary developmental biology. We have examined the organization of the Hox genes of the grasshop- per, Schistocerca gregaria. We find that the grasshopper Hox cluster is over 700 kb long, and is not split into equivalents of the Antennapedia complex and the bithorax complex of Dro- sophila melanogaster. SgDax and probably also Sgzen, the grasshopper homologues of fushi-tarazu (ftz) and Zerknullt (zen), respectively, are also in the cluster, showing that the non-homeotic Antp-class genes, "accessory genes," are an ancient feature of insect Hox clusters.