Importancia de los genes HOX en enfermedades humanas

Abstract

Homeobox genes, master regulators that participate in the formation of the body plan and direct the development of particular body structures or segments, encode homeotic proteins that act as specific transcription factors, have in common a conserved nucleotide sequence of 180 bp called the homeotic box, translated into 61 amino acids, known as homeodomain, involved in DNA binding. In humans, the arrangement of genes within each HOX complex is the same as the HOM complex found in Drosophila melanogaster, which indicates that they originated from duplications of a single primordial complex, the same one that has conserved its basic organization.  HOX genes belong to the category of governing genes, since they control the expression of subordinate genes, playing an important role in morphogenesis and cellular differentiation during embryonic development; They also participate in processes of control of cell proliferation and programmed cell death. Numerous clinical and molecular studies have shown that mutations resulting from alterations in its expression would be related to the genesis of cancer, invasion and metastasis.