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Turning Hox "signatures" into synapomorphies.

¹The Natural History Museum, London, UK. mjt@nhm.ac.uk

Evolution & Development

|March 21, 2001

Summary

Signature Hox genes are unreliable for determining animal phylogeny without an out-group. Analysis of mesozoans suggests limited evidence for lophotrochozoan affinity due to unpolarized Hox gene data.

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary biology
Genomics
Phylogenetics

Background:

Metazoan superphyla (ecdysozoans, lophotrochozoans, deuterostomes) possess characteristic Hox genes.
Hox genes are used to infer phylogenetic relationships of taxa with uncertain affinities, like mesozoans.

Purpose of the Study:

To evaluate the reliability of using
signature
Hox genes for phylogenetic analysis.
To investigate the phylogenetic position of mesozoans using Hox gene data.

Main Methods:

Cladistic analysis of Hox genes.
Utilizing paralogous Hox genes as proxy out-groups to polarize characters.
Peptide sequence alignment of Hox genes, focusing on the homeobox region.

Main Results:

Unpolarized Hox genes, lacking an out-group, are unsuitable for cladistic determination of phylogeny.
Limited reliable residues for Lox5 peptide alignment suggest weak evidence for mesozoan-lophotrochozoan association.
Lophotrochozoan genes Lox2 and Lox4 offer more reliable residues for phylogenetic inference.

Conclusions:

The use of unpolarized Hox gene signatures for inferring phylogeny requires careful consideration.
Mesozoan affinity with lophotrochozoans is not strongly supported by current Lox5 gene analysis.
Potential challenges exist in applying this method to other taxa, such as acoel flatworms.

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