T-box transcription factors and their roles in regulatory hierarchies in the developing heart

T-box transcription factors are important players in the molecular circuitry that generates lineage diversity and form in the developing embryo. At least seven family members are expressed in the developing mammalian heart, and the human T-box genes TBX1 and TBX5 are mutated in cardiac congenital anomaly syndromes. Here, we review T-box gene function during mammalian heart development in the light of new insights into heart morphogenesis. We see for the first time how hierarchies of transcriptional activation and repression involving multiple T-box factors play out in three-dimensional space to establish the cardiac progenitors fields, to define their subservient lineages, and to generate heart form and function.