Sequence analysis of the homeobox-containing exon of the murine Hox-4.3 homeogene

A homeobox-containing gene * was detected by Southern analysis of a cosmid spanning a region of the murine HOX-4 complex between Hox-4.4 (Hox-5.2) and Hox-4.2 (Hox-5.1) with a probe derived from the Hox-4.2 homeobox. The sequence of a cross-hybridizing region revealed an open reading frame encoding an Antennapedia (Antp) class homeodomain highly homologous to the products of human HOX4C (Hox-5.4/HOX4E), mouse Hox-3.1 and Hox-2.4. This, together with strong conservation of sequences 3' to the homoebox, indicates that we have cloned the murine Hox-4.3 gene. No other homeobox sequences were detected in this screen suggesting that the HOX-4 complex lacks paralogous genes represented in the equivalent regions of other HOX loci.