Preprint Communication Version 2 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Recent Experiments Raised Doubt On the Vertebrate Temporal Collinearity of the Hox Genes. A Biophysical Model May Reconcile the Conflicting Findings

Version 1 : Received: 29 December 2020 / Approved: 30 December 2020 / Online: 30 December 2020 (13:29:17 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 31 December 2020 / Approved: 4 January 2021 / Online: 4 January 2021 (08:30:15 CET)

How to cite: Papageorgiou, S. Recent Experiments Raised Doubt On the Vertebrate Temporal Collinearity of the Hox Genes. A Biophysical Model May Reconcile the Conflicting Findings. Preprints 2020, 2020120753. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202012.0753.v2 Papageorgiou, S. Recent Experiments Raised Doubt On the Vertebrate Temporal Collinearity of the Hox Genes. A Biophysical Model May Reconcile the Conflicting Findings. Preprints 2020, 2020120753. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202012.0753.v2

Abstract

Hox gene collinearity (HGC) is a multiscalar property of many animal phyla particularly important during embryogenesis. It relates events occurring in Hox clusters inside the chromosome DNA and embryonic tissues. These two entities differ in size by more than four orders of magnitude. HGC is observed as spatial collinearity (SC) where the Hox genes are located in the order H1, H2, H3 … along the 3’ to 5’ direction of the DNA sequence. The corresponding embryonic tissues (E1, E2, E3, …) are activated along the Anterior – Posterior axis in the same order. Besides this collinearity a temporal collinearity (TC) has been also observed in many vertebrates. According to TC first is H1 expressed in E1, later is H2 in E2, followed by H3,… Lately doubt has been raised whether TC really exists. A biophysical model (BM) has been formulated and tested in the last twenty years. According to BM, physical forces are created which pull the Hox genes one after the other driving them to a transcription factory domain where they are transcribed. The existing experiments support this BM description. In the present work two equivalent realizations of BM are presented which explain the recent findings on TC as observed in the vertebrates.

Keywords

HOX genes; Hox gene collinearity; spatial collinearity; temporal collinearity; vertebrates; elongated gene cluster

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Comments (1)

Comment 1
Received: 4 January 2021
Commenter: Spyros Papageorgiou
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: Author
Comment: Removed section C in  the figure 3 legend as it is not depicted in the actual figure
+ Respond to this comment

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 1
Metrics 0


×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.