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A double‐edged sword to force posterior dominance of Hox genes
Author(s) -
Singh Narendra Pratap,
Mishra Rakesh K.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/bies.20847
Subject(s) - hox gene , ultrabithorax , biology , genetics , drosophila melanogaster , gene , locus (genetics) , regulation of gene expression , untranslated region , gene expression , rna
Spatially and temporally restricted expression of Hox genes requires multiple mechanisms at both the transcriptional and the post‐transcriptional levels. New insight into this precise expression mechanism comes from recent findings of a novel sense–antisense miRNA combination from the bithorax complex of Drosophila melanogaster .1–4 These two miRNAs encoded from the same locus target 3′ untranslated regions of anterior hox genes, Antp, Ubx and abd‐A to establish the dominance of posterior hox gene Abd‐B in its expression domain. Such double‐edge tools, sense–antisense miRNA combinations, also operate at multiple loci in the genome implicating their wider impact on the post‐transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes. BioEssays 30:1058–1061, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.