Hox genes: studies from the 20th to the 21st century. Preface.

摘要

Are the Hox genes so important? Frankly, it is but a rhetorical question. In my opinion, the answer is YES, without any doubt. Still, I found it the right place to ask this question at the beginning of the present book. My purpose is here to argue, and try to convince those who may not agree, that the Hox genes are indeed so important that their study will not end with the 20th century.In fact, I do think that the discovery of the homeobox was one among the main scientific events in biology during the second half of the 20th century, together with the structure of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick and the discovery by Lwoff, Jacob and Monod that the regulation of gene expression was itself genetically determined. I am old enough to remember the shocks that the discovery of the homeobox provoked a quarter of a century ago. Indeed, I can remember what our thoughts were at that time, and how much it changed our way of thinking, in molecular biology, developmental biology and evolutionary biology. In molecular biology, almost everybody at that time was convinced that each transcription factor had to be unique in both structure and sequence to accommodate its specific binding to DNA.