Meeting Abstract

P1.12  Monday, Jan. 4  Relation of Pax4 gene to the legendary Pax6/eyeless orthology MANOUSAKI, TEREZA*; FEINER, NATHALIE; BEGEMANN, GERRIT; MEYER, AXEL; KURAKU, SHIGEHIRO; Univ. of Konstanz; Univ. of Konstanz; Univ. of Konstanz; Univ. of Konstanz; Univ. of Konstanz tereza.manousaki@uni-konstanz.de

In many scenes in Evo-Devo studies at the molecular level, validation of orthology/paralogy should precede comparison of functional aspects. However, it was not until genomes of diverse organisms are sequenced that we are given opportunities to demonstrate fine-scale orthology/paralogy annotation for many of already well-characterized regulatory genes. Our analysis on Pax4 and Pax6 genes also provide one of these examples. These genes both encode transcription factors containing a homeobox and a paired box and are categorized in the Pax gene family whose members usually function as ‘toolkit’ genes. Their structural similarity has traditionally made researchers group these two genes together, but their phylogenetic relationship, especially the timing of the gene duplication, has never been explored in the modern methodological framework. Interestingly, since mid-90s, when mammalian Pax4 genes were first identified, their orthologs have not been reported for any non-mammalian vertebrate. Recently, we have identified putative Pax4 orthologs in teleost fish genome sequences, and analyzed their positions in molecular phylogenetic trees and embryonic expression patterns. In this presentation, we report results of our analysis and insights into further related topics on secondary gene losses, evolutionary modification of embryonic expression patterns and comparative genomic strategy to date gene duplications.