Worm Breeder's Gazette 11(5): 33
These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.
Recently Nancy Hawkins and Jim McGhee published their four homeobox- containing genes from C. elegans (1). One of their genes, ceh-9, did not have an obvious homologue in any other organism. However, a newly discovered sea urchin homeobox gene, TgHbox5, published in a relatively obscure journal (2) is similar to ceh-9. Comparison of the ceh-9 and TgHbox5 homeodomains showed that they are 65% identical, and that they have additional amino acids outside the homeodomain conserved. Clearly this type of homeodomain constitutes a novel class that has not yet been detected in vertebrates or flies, but certainly must be present in these organisms. Further sequencing should reveal if this new class has additional sequence motifs conserved outside the homeodomain. [See Figure 1]