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Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Expression Analysis of Mammalian Linker-histone Subtypes
Published on: March 19, 2012
Characterization of a novel human HMBOX1 splicing variant lacking the homeodomain and with attenuated transcription
Mingjun Zhang1, Shuai Chen, Qiang Li
1State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Institute of Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
We previously identified the human HMBOX1 (homeobox containing 1) gene, which represents a distinct group of HNF transcription factors, and is a potential transcription repressor with highly expression in pancreas. In our present work, we found that there exists a splicing variant of HMBOX1, designated HMBOX1b. Compared to HMBOX1, HMBOX1b encodes a 304 amino acids protein that shares the N-terminal region but has no homeodomain and the C-terminal region because of an alternative exon 7 which results in reading frame shifting. Unlike the highly pancreatic expression of HMBOX1, HMBOX1b was ubiquitous expressed in all human tissues detected by RT-PCR. Immunofluorescence staining showed that HMBOX1b accumulated in both cytoplasm and nucleus, and transcriptional reporter assays indicated that HMBOX1b only retained faint transcriptional repressive activity. Taken together, our findings suggest a distinct role of HMBOX1b, and the control of mRNA splicing might be involved in homeobox genes regulation.
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